Brazilain President Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former leader, on Tuesday traded insults as they launched their campaigns for Brazil’s October elections.
The two front-runners, who have in reality been campaigning for months, made it official on opening day with events that also showcased their opposing styles.
Bolsonaro, 67, launched his campaign with a rally in Juiz de Fora, a small southeastern city where an attacker stabbed and nearly killed him during his 2018 campaign.
Photo: AP
“This is where I was reborn... This is where the Creator saved my life so I could give my best for our nation as president,” Bolsonaro told cheering supporters packed into the street where he was stabbed by a man later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
Hitting on the themes of Christianity and family values, Bolsonaro acknowledged Brazil’s “serious problems.”
However, the former army captain called himself the best candidate to lead the country, warning that his opponent’s return would be a “step backwards” and usher in “communism” and “gender ideology.”
Photo: AP
The president drew his loudest cheers when he handed the microphone to first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, who led the crowd in prayer and took her own digs at Lula.
“Our enemy just wants to steal, deceive and destroy,” she said, to chants of “Lula, thief, you belong in jail.”
Draped in the Brazilian flag, 50-year-old teacher Jaqueline Lopes said she was voting for Bolsonaro to “continue the clean up that started four years ago.”
“I want the left to be eradicated from this country,” said Lopes, who made the three-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro to attend the rally.
Meanwhile, Lula launched his campaign with a visit to a Volkswagen plant in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the industrial heartland of Sao Paulo State where the 76-year-old launched his political career as a union leader in the 1970s.
“I’m returning so we can take our country back,” he said.
Slamming Bolsonaro as a “bogus, genocidal president,” he condemned the “lies” he said the incumbent’s camp was spreading about him in a bid to win the Evangelical vote — an estimated 31 percent of Brazil’s 213 million people.
“If anyone is possessed by the devil, it’s Bolsonaro,” he said.
Lula leads with 44 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Bolsonaro, a poll from the IPEC institute showed on Monday.
If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of valid votes in the Oct. 2 election, a runoff would be held on Oct. 30.
Brazil has been torn in a two-way race since March last year, when the Brazilian Supreme Court annulled a corruption conviction that had sent Lula to jail and sidelined him from politics.
The former president left office in 2010 as the most popular leader in Brazilian history after presiding over an economic boom that helped lift about 30 million people from poverty.
However, he fell from grace when he was convicted in Brazil’s “Car Wash” scandal.
Lula, who denies wrongdoing, calls the case a trumped-up bid to topple his legacy.
“Lula is the Brazilian people’s hope for a better life,” said 48-year-old welder Mauricio Souza, who was at the rally belting out songs on his trumpet.
After a day on the campaign trail, the two foes crossed paths late on Tuesday in Brasilia at an inauguration ceremony for the new head of the top court overseeing the country’s elections, who has been a frequent critic of the current president.
Sitting almost face to face — Bolsonaro on the podium and Lula in the front row of the audience along with several other former presidents — the two candidates did not exchange any words, at least in front of the cameras.
As he was sworn in, Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Brazil was “one of the largest democracies in the world ... but we are the only one that counts and discloses the results on the same day, with agility, security, competence and transparency. That is a source of national pride.”
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