Re: Brazil
Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2022 3:14 pm
The Most Important Election in Brazil’s History
By BRYAN PITTS
October 29, 2022
Brazil faces a stark choice in its presidential runoff Sunday. Can Lula and the Left overcome Bolsonaro’s misinformation and attempts to buy the vote?
By Bryan Pitts for NACLA
n Sunday, up to 156 million Brazilian voters will go to the polls to choose a new president in a run-off election. The stakes could not be higher. The far-right incumbent is Jair Bolsonaro, whose term (2019-2022) has been marked by endless controversy, accusations of corruption, and the death of more than 600,000 Brazilians in a woefully mismanaged pandemic. He will face the center-left former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose eight years in power (2003-2010) witnessed major reductions in poverty and inequality, sustained efforts to expand rights for marginalized groups, and unprecedented prestige for Brazil on the international stage.
Although Lula defeated Bolsonaro by 5.2 percentage points in the October 2 first-round vote, he did not achieve the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. The most recent polls show Lula leading by margins of 2-6 points. Yet confidence in the polls has been shaken by their failure to accurately forecast Bolsonaro’s first-round total. Most polls placed him between 35 percent and 38 percent of valid votes, but when the votes were counted, the incumbent had 43.2 percent. For his part, Bolsonaro has used the polls’ first-round inaccuracy to claim that they were rigged against him and to call for a law punishing firms for polls that fail to reflect the final vote.
Bolsonaro has also employed the time-honored Brazilian tactic of using his executive control over federal funds to influence the vote, but on an unprecedented scale. Since August, his government has increased cash payments for poor families in the Auxílio Brasil program, the rebranded version of Lula’s wildly popular Bolsa Família program, and raised the number of Auxílio Brasil beneficiaries by 3 million. Bolsonaro also created special subsidies for truckers and taxi drivers, increased payments to help families buy cooking propane, and moved up a variety of welfare payments to take place in advance of the second round vote. The Lula campaign has filed a complaint with the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), alleging that pro-Bolsonaro businesses have attempted to coerce their employees into voting for the incumbent.
On top of all this, Bolsonaro has continuously made unsubstantiated claims that Brazil’s globally-respected electronic voting system—in place since the 1990s—is susceptible to fraud. These allegations are being spread internationally by Trump allies such as Steven Bannon, and claims are now circulating in far-right circles that the U.S. companies they have accused of rigging the 2020 election for Joe Biden are now being used in Brazil to steal the election from Bolsonaro.
Despite the ludicrousness of these claims, Bolsonaro has an advantage that Donald Trump lacked in his attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election: a long tradition of military intervention in politics. As recently as 2018, the military pressured the Supreme Court to send Lula to prison for his politically-motivated conviction on false corruption charges. Could this mean that Bolsonaro has a better chance of succeeding at overturning the election than Trump did?
In fact, despite these attempts to buy votes and sow doubts about the trustworthiness of Brazil’s democratic institutions, there is still cause for optimism going into Sunday. Both the third- and fourth-place finishers, Mato Grosso do Sul senator, Simone Tebet, and former Ceará governor and Lula cabinet member, Ciro Gomes, have endorsed Lula. Tebet has actively campaigned for Lula, while Gomes, after a tepid initial endorsement, has been silent, just as he was in the 2018 runoff. Nonetheless, polls indicate that most of their supporters will back Lula.
While uncertainty about the polls’ accuracy continues, the firm that came closest to predicting the first-round result, predicting 50.3 percent for Lula and 41.1 percent for Bolsonaro, currently shows Lula with a 53 percent to 47 percent lead. Other polls show Lula with as much as an 8-point lead. After the first debate on October 16, focus groups and pundits generally agreed that Lula outperformed his rival. The former president will have a final chance to increase his lead in Friday’s final presidential debate.
Lula’s lead has widened slightly in the wake of an October 14 podcast interview in which Bolsonaro appeared to speak favorably of statutory rape. The president claimed that he “felt a spark” during an encounter with a group of 14- and 15-year-old Venezuelan girls who he took for sex workers, as he rode his motorcycle on the outskirts of Brasília. The opposition quickly jumped on his statement to accuse him of pedophilia. Bolsonaro has also had to explain his friendship with former federal congressman Roberto Jefferson, who is facing attempted murder charges after opening fire on federal police officers last Sunday. The officers were attempting to arrest Jefferson for breaking the terms of a home confinement, after being arrested in 2021 for spreading political disinformation via social media.
On balance, then, the indications point toward Lula winning the runoff on October 30. Should Bolsonaro lose, there is little doubt that he will follow the lead of his friend and hero, Trump, and declare—again, without evidence—that the results were fraudulent. However, fears of a military coup to overturn the election are, if not entirely unfounded, certainly overblown. There appears to be little appetite among military leadership for another blatant intervention in civilian political institutions. The military’s ignominious withdrawal from power amidst mass protests and economic collapse at the close of the 1964-1985 dictatorship persists in the national memory, and it is unlikely the military would decide en masse to support another such intervention. Moreover, historically military interventions have nearly always taken place at the behest of a decisive majority of the country’s civilian political class. As my forthcoming book argues, the trauma of military tutelage during the last dictatorship has created great reticence among Brazil’s political elite toward any prospective attempt by the military to return to power.
If the polls are indeed within striking distance of the final results, and if Bolsonaro does founder in his probable attempt to overturn the election, it is likely that on January 1, 2023, Lula will be sworn into office for a third term as president. And the Left in the Global North will watch with hope that he can indeed fazer o Brasil feliz de novo—make Brazil happy again.
https://www.brasilwire.com/the-most-imp ... s-history/
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Bolsonaro Calls Ballot The Most Important Election In Brazil
Archive photograph dated October 22, 2022, showing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, while participating in a campaign event, in Guarulhos | Photo: EFE/ Sebastião Moreira
Published 27 October 2022
The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and candidate for re-election for the Liberal Party (extreme right) on Thursday described this Sunday's ballot as the most crucial election in the country in a campaign event he held in Rio de Janeiro.
This Sunday's election is "one of the most important elections" in the country, said Bolsonaro in his speech during the event, reported local news portal G1.
The ultra-right candidate participated in a caravan in the Baixada Fluminense and then held a rally in the West Zone of Rio.
Bolsonaro was accompanied by the reelected governor of Rio, Cláudio Castro, deputies, local political and religious leaders.
The candidate attacked in his speech his adversary, former leftist president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011): "More than choosing a president identified with you, it is choosing what we want for our Brazil. Is it the return of the past, of corruption? Or is it the permanence in this path of peace, work, order, and progress?".
Bolsonaro highlighted the reduction in inflation in recent months, driven by the fall in fuel prices.
In September, Brazil registered deflation for the third consecutive month.
The runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro will be held this Sunday and the left-wing leader starts with a slight advantage; according to the Datafolha poll released on Thursday, he would have 49 percent of the votes against Bolsonaro's 44 percent.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0015.html
Lula Accuses Bolsonaro of Isolating Brazil From the World
Lula (l) and Bolsonaro (r) during their latest debate | Photo: Prensa Latina
Published 28 October 2022
On Friday, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took advantage of the last debate between candidates before Sunday's presidential elections to accuse the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, of having adopted a foreign policy that isolated Brazil from the entire world.
"Brazil will continue like you, alone," said Lula in the last debate between the two candidates before Sunday's runoff election, held in a Globo TV studio in Rio de Janeiro.
Discussing foreign policy proposals for the South American giant, the former trade unionist accused the ex-military man of being isolated. "What are you going to do to reinsert Brazil in the world?" he asked.
Bolsonaro did not answer immediately and Lula reiterated that the former paratrooper "has no relationship with any country in the world...he knows that our foreign policy (during his administration from 2003-2011) was the most effective," he said.
The former mechanic recalled that "Brazil was a major international player during my administration...Nobody wants to talk to Brazil and no country wants to receive Bolsonaro", stressed the presidential standard-bearer of the Workers' Party.
From the beginning of the televised confrontation, Lula invited his political adversary to stop lying before the Brazilian people and again commented that "no president of any country wants to come here," alluding to the frictions Bolsonaro had with world leaders over environmental policy issues.
Mediated by journalist William Bonner, the debate established five blocks: the first and third were free topics, lasting 30 minutes.
After the end of the event, the candidates participated in a press conference, with 10 minutes each.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0020.html
Brazilian Amazon Loses More Than 9,000 KM2 So Far This Year
Fisherman Manoel Andrade de Araújo, 73, observes his boat stuck in the low waters of Lago do Aleixo affected by drought, on October 25, 2022, in the Amazon , in Manaus (Brazil) | Photo: EFE / Raphael Alves
Published 28 October 2022 (17 hours 28 minutes ago)
The Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 9,000 square kilometers of virgin vegetation so far this year, according to official data released Friday by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Between January 1 and October 21 of this year (the latest data available), satellites issued deforestation alerts for 9,277 square kilometers, the agency reported.
This is the worst number in the entire history of Deter, INPE's Real Time Deforestation Detection (Deter) system.
Even with two months left in the year, that mark already surpasses the entire year of 2019, the worst to date, when 9,178 square kilometers of forest were lost.
Fires and deforestation in the Amazon have broken records year after year during the mandate of President Jair Bolsonaro, who always denied the problem and encouraged the practice of environmental crimes, such as illegal mining, for example.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0015.html
Lula's party reversed this trend once and must win in order to do it again.
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Lula says Bolsonaro will pay for mistakes during the pandemic
Throughout the debate, both Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro attacked each other, making references to mistakes made during their terms. | Photo: EFE
Published 29 October 2022
At another point in the debate, Lula da Silva blamed Bolsonaro for leading the country to international isolation during his government.
During the second presidential debate in Brazil, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that current President Jair Bolsonaro will one day have to pay for the mistakes made during the pandemic, which has left more than 690,000 dead from Covid-19 in the country. country.
The former president and candidate for the Workers' Party (PT), blamed his rival for the impoverishment of the population in the last four years.
"One day you will have to pay for the nearly 300,000 people who died due to the delay in the immunization process against Covid-19 in Brazil," Lula blamed Bolsonaro, recalling that he delayed the decision to purchase vaccines and resisted Recognize the severity of the disease.
At another point in the debate, Lula da Silva blamed Bolsonaro for leading the country to international isolation during his government.
From the beginning of the television confrontation, Lula invited the right-wing president to stop lying to the Brazilian people and once again commented that "no president of any country wants to come here," alluding to the friction that Bolsonaro had with world leaders over security issues. environmental policies.
Throughout the debate, both Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro attacked each other, making references to mistakes made during their terms.
Bolsonaro repeatedly accused the former president of lying during the electoral campaign and also, in reproaching him for the corruption scandals that tarnished his government (2003-2010) and that of his co-religionist Dilma Rousseff.
To respond to Bolsonaro's provocations, Lula addressed the spectators to "apologize" for the lack of proposals in a debate where the word "lie" was the protagonist.
In the final part of the debate, the PT candidate asked for the vote to restore harmony in the country, assuring that Brazil "probably" experienced its best moment during his administration.
For his part, Jair Bolsonaro took advantage of his final statement to defend the most conservative values, stating that his opponents defend the liberation of drugs and the legalization of abortion.
The president concluded by repeating his campaign slogan "Brazil above all, God above all."
Lula reaches the second round as the candidate with the most votes in the first round, with 48.4 percent obtained on October 2, compared to the 43.2 received by Bolsonaro.
https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-l ... -0005.html
Google Translator
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Brazil: Between Democracy and Far-Right Autocracy
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 28, 2022
Juraima Almeida and Aram Aharonian
Nothing will be the same in Brazil from the night of Sunday 30, when 156 million Brazilians will have chosen their next president from the extreme right-wing Jair Bolsonaro and the progressive Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and decided between democracy and a future for all, or the autocracy of a government backed by the military commanders, for the benefit of the richest.
“We have reached the moment to define our destiny. Nothing will be as before, after next Sunday. We will be profoundly happy or unhappy. We will regain the power to decide the destiny of the country. Or we will definitively give up the power to define what we want for Brazil,” explains sociologist Emir Sader.
The unknown is whether Bolsonaro will accept a possible defeat after sowing suspicions against the voting system for months in the purest Donald Trump style. Although he has toned down his threats, he remains elusive about what his reaction will be in the event that he loses to Lula, the favorite in the polls.
From the time the results are known until the inauguration of the next president on January 1, 2023, the last two months of the year will pass. Whatever the outcome, everything points to the perpetuation of the asymmetric polarization between a light left and an aggressive extreme right in a country with fragile democratic institutions.
The battle is not only between Lula and Bolsonaro, but between democracy and authoritarianism, food sovereignty and hunger, dignity and servility, religious freedom and Pentecostal moral crusade. Whoever wins, what is certain is that a dark cloud of far-right parliamentarians will continue to be active in the country, occupying the space of opposition to the progressivism of the Workers’ Party (PT). And, surely, Bolsonaro will be the great spokesman of this camp.
Between the extreme right and democracy
The election in Brazil mobilizes forces and movements of the extreme right all over the world, while foreign democracies prepare to ratify on Sunday the results of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) in the hope of avoiding a space for a democratic rupture or a questioning of the results.
In several foreign capitals, the order of the governments is to prepare the news cables so that on Sunday, the winner of the election may be congratulated by the presidents. The strategy was used in the election of Joe Biden in the United States, in an effort to stifle Donald Trump’s operation to question the result and warn of alleged fraud.
What is desired is to avoid a repetition of the scenario of the assault on the Capitol in the United States in 2021, with an eventual coup d’état: an endorsement on Sunday of the TSE results may send a signal that an institutional breakdown will not be welcome. Washington also alerted the Brazilian government that there is no room for Bolsonaro to question the electoral process.
This week, the presidents of the governments of Spain and Portugal, Pedro Sánchez and Antonio Costa, announced their support for the candidacy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and both insisted on defending democracy. Weeks ago the support came from former European heads of state and government, including those of the right wing.
“The outcome of the Brazilian presidential election will have a decisive impact, which will go far beyond its borders. When democracy is in danger, it is necessary to unite the divergent to defeat the antagonists. That is why we, former heads of state and government of various political persuasions, support the candidacy of former President Lula,” said former French President François Hollande.
Also on the list are José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former Spanish Prime Minister, Massimo d’Alema and Enrico Letta, former heads of government of Italy, Micheline Calmy Rey, former president of Switzerland, and Elio di Rupo, former prime minister of Belgium.
But the election also mobilizes the extreme right of the world, which in the last four years has had bolsonarismo in power in Brazil to advance its agenda and dismantle consensus on human rights issues. In the first electoral round, Bolsonaro’s campaign released a video in which several far-right leaders announced their support for the Brazilian. Almost all of them were out of government or had been defeated in recent elections, except Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister.
The polls do not like him
In his quick speech this Wednesday night, Wednesday 26, at the Palácio da Alvorada, President Jair Bolsonaro admitted that his polls counted fewer votes than his campaign team expected stated: “In certain places I thought he would do well and could even win (…), we lost. Certainly the insertions made a difference.”
Perhaps that explains the president’s irritation, the suspension of his trip to Rio de Janeiro, the hasty convening of threatening meetings in Brasília with ministers, military commanders and campaign advisors, and the call to the press for his pronouncement.
If Bolsonaro’s intention was to demonstrate strength, the effect was the opposite: it was a testimony of weakness and fear of defeat at the polls. The campaign for reelection detected that he has fewer votes than he imagined and the candidate tries to defame or postpone the vote scheduled for Sunday, as advised by his domestic and foreign advisors.
Bolsonaro follows a similar script – this one second-hand – to the one adopted by Trump when he tried to derail the elections in that country: denouncing that there would be a flawed vote counting system and retail fraud, calling his voters to remain in the streets in a state of alert, before, during and after the opening of the polls.
Bolsonaro is complaining about the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, because he did not respond to a request to open an investigation into the complaint that twelve radio stations in the Northeast were not broadcasting his electoral propaganda. “He is desperate because he knows he is going to lose.” commented Lula.
A concerted effort of recommendations from his advisors dissuaded Bolsonaro from trying to hurl vilifications against the TSE president. And the coup announcement that many feared became a drop in the bucket. By the way, a coup is not announced, it is implemented.
Ricardo Noblat talks about Bolsonaro’s plans for Sunday night: since the votes in the northeast – where Lula leads – are the last to be counted, Bolsonaro will rush to announce his victory when he is ahead in the count. If the election ends with his defeat, he will say that the election was stolen from him and that he will react “within the four lines of the Constitution.” Or simply say it was stolen.
All the resources of the State to stay in office
But what has never, ever been seen before concerns the vast distribution of resources, exceeding 13.6 billion dollars in the attempt to buy votes, leaving a huge hole in the public accounts for 2023 and drastic cuts in resources destined for education and health, environmental protection and indigenous rights.
What no one manages to understand, much less explain, is how all this, from the spreading of scandalous lies to the scandalous distribution of public money both through “social benefits” and an illegal “secret budget”, happens in the face of the inactivity of the authorities, both of the Superior Electoral Court and the Federal Supreme Court, says writer and analyst Eric Nepomuceno.
Perhaps it is a sign of Jair Bolsonaro’s dishonesty in order not to abandon the prerogatives of the presidential chair and thus be able to evade the courts of justice. But it is also a dramatic demonstration of the extent to which Brazilians allow themselves to be manipulated.
“Apesar de você, amanhã há de ser outro dia. Eu pergunto a você. Onde vai se esconder da enorme euforia?” (In spite of you, tomorrow will be another day. Where are you going to hide from the enormous euphoria?), sang Chico Buarque.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/10/ ... autocracy/
By BRYAN PITTS
October 29, 2022
Brazil faces a stark choice in its presidential runoff Sunday. Can Lula and the Left overcome Bolsonaro’s misinformation and attempts to buy the vote?
By Bryan Pitts for NACLA
n Sunday, up to 156 million Brazilian voters will go to the polls to choose a new president in a run-off election. The stakes could not be higher. The far-right incumbent is Jair Bolsonaro, whose term (2019-2022) has been marked by endless controversy, accusations of corruption, and the death of more than 600,000 Brazilians in a woefully mismanaged pandemic. He will face the center-left former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose eight years in power (2003-2010) witnessed major reductions in poverty and inequality, sustained efforts to expand rights for marginalized groups, and unprecedented prestige for Brazil on the international stage.
Although Lula defeated Bolsonaro by 5.2 percentage points in the October 2 first-round vote, he did not achieve the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. The most recent polls show Lula leading by margins of 2-6 points. Yet confidence in the polls has been shaken by their failure to accurately forecast Bolsonaro’s first-round total. Most polls placed him between 35 percent and 38 percent of valid votes, but when the votes were counted, the incumbent had 43.2 percent. For his part, Bolsonaro has used the polls’ first-round inaccuracy to claim that they were rigged against him and to call for a law punishing firms for polls that fail to reflect the final vote.
Bolsonaro has also employed the time-honored Brazilian tactic of using his executive control over federal funds to influence the vote, but on an unprecedented scale. Since August, his government has increased cash payments for poor families in the Auxílio Brasil program, the rebranded version of Lula’s wildly popular Bolsa Família program, and raised the number of Auxílio Brasil beneficiaries by 3 million. Bolsonaro also created special subsidies for truckers and taxi drivers, increased payments to help families buy cooking propane, and moved up a variety of welfare payments to take place in advance of the second round vote. The Lula campaign has filed a complaint with the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), alleging that pro-Bolsonaro businesses have attempted to coerce their employees into voting for the incumbent.
On top of all this, Bolsonaro has continuously made unsubstantiated claims that Brazil’s globally-respected electronic voting system—in place since the 1990s—is susceptible to fraud. These allegations are being spread internationally by Trump allies such as Steven Bannon, and claims are now circulating in far-right circles that the U.S. companies they have accused of rigging the 2020 election for Joe Biden are now being used in Brazil to steal the election from Bolsonaro.
Despite the ludicrousness of these claims, Bolsonaro has an advantage that Donald Trump lacked in his attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election: a long tradition of military intervention in politics. As recently as 2018, the military pressured the Supreme Court to send Lula to prison for his politically-motivated conviction on false corruption charges. Could this mean that Bolsonaro has a better chance of succeeding at overturning the election than Trump did?
In fact, despite these attempts to buy votes and sow doubts about the trustworthiness of Brazil’s democratic institutions, there is still cause for optimism going into Sunday. Both the third- and fourth-place finishers, Mato Grosso do Sul senator, Simone Tebet, and former Ceará governor and Lula cabinet member, Ciro Gomes, have endorsed Lula. Tebet has actively campaigned for Lula, while Gomes, after a tepid initial endorsement, has been silent, just as he was in the 2018 runoff. Nonetheless, polls indicate that most of their supporters will back Lula.
While uncertainty about the polls’ accuracy continues, the firm that came closest to predicting the first-round result, predicting 50.3 percent for Lula and 41.1 percent for Bolsonaro, currently shows Lula with a 53 percent to 47 percent lead. Other polls show Lula with as much as an 8-point lead. After the first debate on October 16, focus groups and pundits generally agreed that Lula outperformed his rival. The former president will have a final chance to increase his lead in Friday’s final presidential debate.
Lula’s lead has widened slightly in the wake of an October 14 podcast interview in which Bolsonaro appeared to speak favorably of statutory rape. The president claimed that he “felt a spark” during an encounter with a group of 14- and 15-year-old Venezuelan girls who he took for sex workers, as he rode his motorcycle on the outskirts of Brasília. The opposition quickly jumped on his statement to accuse him of pedophilia. Bolsonaro has also had to explain his friendship with former federal congressman Roberto Jefferson, who is facing attempted murder charges after opening fire on federal police officers last Sunday. The officers were attempting to arrest Jefferson for breaking the terms of a home confinement, after being arrested in 2021 for spreading political disinformation via social media.
On balance, then, the indications point toward Lula winning the runoff on October 30. Should Bolsonaro lose, there is little doubt that he will follow the lead of his friend and hero, Trump, and declare—again, without evidence—that the results were fraudulent. However, fears of a military coup to overturn the election are, if not entirely unfounded, certainly overblown. There appears to be little appetite among military leadership for another blatant intervention in civilian political institutions. The military’s ignominious withdrawal from power amidst mass protests and economic collapse at the close of the 1964-1985 dictatorship persists in the national memory, and it is unlikely the military would decide en masse to support another such intervention. Moreover, historically military interventions have nearly always taken place at the behest of a decisive majority of the country’s civilian political class. As my forthcoming book argues, the trauma of military tutelage during the last dictatorship has created great reticence among Brazil’s political elite toward any prospective attempt by the military to return to power.
If the polls are indeed within striking distance of the final results, and if Bolsonaro does founder in his probable attempt to overturn the election, it is likely that on January 1, 2023, Lula will be sworn into office for a third term as president. And the Left in the Global North will watch with hope that he can indeed fazer o Brasil feliz de novo—make Brazil happy again.
https://www.brasilwire.com/the-most-imp ... s-history/
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Bolsonaro Calls Ballot The Most Important Election In Brazil
Archive photograph dated October 22, 2022, showing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, while participating in a campaign event, in Guarulhos | Photo: EFE/ Sebastião Moreira
Published 27 October 2022
The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and candidate for re-election for the Liberal Party (extreme right) on Thursday described this Sunday's ballot as the most crucial election in the country in a campaign event he held in Rio de Janeiro.
This Sunday's election is "one of the most important elections" in the country, said Bolsonaro in his speech during the event, reported local news portal G1.
The ultra-right candidate participated in a caravan in the Baixada Fluminense and then held a rally in the West Zone of Rio.
Bolsonaro was accompanied by the reelected governor of Rio, Cláudio Castro, deputies, local political and religious leaders.
The candidate attacked in his speech his adversary, former leftist president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011): "More than choosing a president identified with you, it is choosing what we want for our Brazil. Is it the return of the past, of corruption? Or is it the permanence in this path of peace, work, order, and progress?".
Bolsonaro highlighted the reduction in inflation in recent months, driven by the fall in fuel prices.
In September, Brazil registered deflation for the third consecutive month.
The runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro will be held this Sunday and the left-wing leader starts with a slight advantage; according to the Datafolha poll released on Thursday, he would have 49 percent of the votes against Bolsonaro's 44 percent.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0015.html
Lula Accuses Bolsonaro of Isolating Brazil From the World
Lula (l) and Bolsonaro (r) during their latest debate | Photo: Prensa Latina
Published 28 October 2022
On Friday, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took advantage of the last debate between candidates before Sunday's presidential elections to accuse the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, of having adopted a foreign policy that isolated Brazil from the entire world.
"Brazil will continue like you, alone," said Lula in the last debate between the two candidates before Sunday's runoff election, held in a Globo TV studio in Rio de Janeiro.
Discussing foreign policy proposals for the South American giant, the former trade unionist accused the ex-military man of being isolated. "What are you going to do to reinsert Brazil in the world?" he asked.
Bolsonaro did not answer immediately and Lula reiterated that the former paratrooper "has no relationship with any country in the world...he knows that our foreign policy (during his administration from 2003-2011) was the most effective," he said.
The former mechanic recalled that "Brazil was a major international player during my administration...Nobody wants to talk to Brazil and no country wants to receive Bolsonaro", stressed the presidential standard-bearer of the Workers' Party.
From the beginning of the televised confrontation, Lula invited his political adversary to stop lying before the Brazilian people and again commented that "no president of any country wants to come here," alluding to the frictions Bolsonaro had with world leaders over environmental policy issues.
Mediated by journalist William Bonner, the debate established five blocks: the first and third were free topics, lasting 30 minutes.
After the end of the event, the candidates participated in a press conference, with 10 minutes each.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0020.html
Brazilian Amazon Loses More Than 9,000 KM2 So Far This Year
Fisherman Manoel Andrade de Araújo, 73, observes his boat stuck in the low waters of Lago do Aleixo affected by drought, on October 25, 2022, in the Amazon , in Manaus (Brazil) | Photo: EFE / Raphael Alves
Published 28 October 2022 (17 hours 28 minutes ago)
The Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 9,000 square kilometers of virgin vegetation so far this year, according to official data released Friday by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Between January 1 and October 21 of this year (the latest data available), satellites issued deforestation alerts for 9,277 square kilometers, the agency reported.
This is the worst number in the entire history of Deter, INPE's Real Time Deforestation Detection (Deter) system.
Even with two months left in the year, that mark already surpasses the entire year of 2019, the worst to date, when 9,178 square kilometers of forest were lost.
Fires and deforestation in the Amazon have broken records year after year during the mandate of President Jair Bolsonaro, who always denied the problem and encouraged the practice of environmental crimes, such as illegal mining, for example.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bra ... -0015.html
Lula's party reversed this trend once and must win in order to do it again.
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Lula says Bolsonaro will pay for mistakes during the pandemic
Throughout the debate, both Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro attacked each other, making references to mistakes made during their terms. | Photo: EFE
Published 29 October 2022
At another point in the debate, Lula da Silva blamed Bolsonaro for leading the country to international isolation during his government.
During the second presidential debate in Brazil, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that current President Jair Bolsonaro will one day have to pay for the mistakes made during the pandemic, which has left more than 690,000 dead from Covid-19 in the country. country.
The former president and candidate for the Workers' Party (PT), blamed his rival for the impoverishment of the population in the last four years.
"One day you will have to pay for the nearly 300,000 people who died due to the delay in the immunization process against Covid-19 in Brazil," Lula blamed Bolsonaro, recalling that he delayed the decision to purchase vaccines and resisted Recognize the severity of the disease.
At another point in the debate, Lula da Silva blamed Bolsonaro for leading the country to international isolation during his government.
From the beginning of the television confrontation, Lula invited the right-wing president to stop lying to the Brazilian people and once again commented that "no president of any country wants to come here," alluding to the friction that Bolsonaro had with world leaders over security issues. environmental policies.
Throughout the debate, both Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro attacked each other, making references to mistakes made during their terms.
Bolsonaro repeatedly accused the former president of lying during the electoral campaign and also, in reproaching him for the corruption scandals that tarnished his government (2003-2010) and that of his co-religionist Dilma Rousseff.
To respond to Bolsonaro's provocations, Lula addressed the spectators to "apologize" for the lack of proposals in a debate where the word "lie" was the protagonist.
In the final part of the debate, the PT candidate asked for the vote to restore harmony in the country, assuring that Brazil "probably" experienced its best moment during his administration.
For his part, Jair Bolsonaro took advantage of his final statement to defend the most conservative values, stating that his opponents defend the liberation of drugs and the legalization of abortion.
The president concluded by repeating his campaign slogan "Brazil above all, God above all."
Lula reaches the second round as the candidate with the most votes in the first round, with 48.4 percent obtained on October 2, compared to the 43.2 received by Bolsonaro.
https://www.telesurtv.net/news/brasil-l ... -0005.html
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Brazil: Between Democracy and Far-Right Autocracy
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 28, 2022
Juraima Almeida and Aram Aharonian
Nothing will be the same in Brazil from the night of Sunday 30, when 156 million Brazilians will have chosen their next president from the extreme right-wing Jair Bolsonaro and the progressive Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and decided between democracy and a future for all, or the autocracy of a government backed by the military commanders, for the benefit of the richest.
“We have reached the moment to define our destiny. Nothing will be as before, after next Sunday. We will be profoundly happy or unhappy. We will regain the power to decide the destiny of the country. Or we will definitively give up the power to define what we want for Brazil,” explains sociologist Emir Sader.
The unknown is whether Bolsonaro will accept a possible defeat after sowing suspicions against the voting system for months in the purest Donald Trump style. Although he has toned down his threats, he remains elusive about what his reaction will be in the event that he loses to Lula, the favorite in the polls.
From the time the results are known until the inauguration of the next president on January 1, 2023, the last two months of the year will pass. Whatever the outcome, everything points to the perpetuation of the asymmetric polarization between a light left and an aggressive extreme right in a country with fragile democratic institutions.
The battle is not only between Lula and Bolsonaro, but between democracy and authoritarianism, food sovereignty and hunger, dignity and servility, religious freedom and Pentecostal moral crusade. Whoever wins, what is certain is that a dark cloud of far-right parliamentarians will continue to be active in the country, occupying the space of opposition to the progressivism of the Workers’ Party (PT). And, surely, Bolsonaro will be the great spokesman of this camp.
Between the extreme right and democracy
The election in Brazil mobilizes forces and movements of the extreme right all over the world, while foreign democracies prepare to ratify on Sunday the results of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) in the hope of avoiding a space for a democratic rupture or a questioning of the results.
In several foreign capitals, the order of the governments is to prepare the news cables so that on Sunday, the winner of the election may be congratulated by the presidents. The strategy was used in the election of Joe Biden in the United States, in an effort to stifle Donald Trump’s operation to question the result and warn of alleged fraud.
What is desired is to avoid a repetition of the scenario of the assault on the Capitol in the United States in 2021, with an eventual coup d’état: an endorsement on Sunday of the TSE results may send a signal that an institutional breakdown will not be welcome. Washington also alerted the Brazilian government that there is no room for Bolsonaro to question the electoral process.
This week, the presidents of the governments of Spain and Portugal, Pedro Sánchez and Antonio Costa, announced their support for the candidacy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and both insisted on defending democracy. Weeks ago the support came from former European heads of state and government, including those of the right wing.
“The outcome of the Brazilian presidential election will have a decisive impact, which will go far beyond its borders. When democracy is in danger, it is necessary to unite the divergent to defeat the antagonists. That is why we, former heads of state and government of various political persuasions, support the candidacy of former President Lula,” said former French President François Hollande.
Also on the list are José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former Spanish Prime Minister, Massimo d’Alema and Enrico Letta, former heads of government of Italy, Micheline Calmy Rey, former president of Switzerland, and Elio di Rupo, former prime minister of Belgium.
But the election also mobilizes the extreme right of the world, which in the last four years has had bolsonarismo in power in Brazil to advance its agenda and dismantle consensus on human rights issues. In the first electoral round, Bolsonaro’s campaign released a video in which several far-right leaders announced their support for the Brazilian. Almost all of them were out of government or had been defeated in recent elections, except Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister.
The polls do not like him
In his quick speech this Wednesday night, Wednesday 26, at the Palácio da Alvorada, President Jair Bolsonaro admitted that his polls counted fewer votes than his campaign team expected stated: “In certain places I thought he would do well and could even win (…), we lost. Certainly the insertions made a difference.”
Perhaps that explains the president’s irritation, the suspension of his trip to Rio de Janeiro, the hasty convening of threatening meetings in Brasília with ministers, military commanders and campaign advisors, and the call to the press for his pronouncement.
If Bolsonaro’s intention was to demonstrate strength, the effect was the opposite: it was a testimony of weakness and fear of defeat at the polls. The campaign for reelection detected that he has fewer votes than he imagined and the candidate tries to defame or postpone the vote scheduled for Sunday, as advised by his domestic and foreign advisors.
Bolsonaro follows a similar script – this one second-hand – to the one adopted by Trump when he tried to derail the elections in that country: denouncing that there would be a flawed vote counting system and retail fraud, calling his voters to remain in the streets in a state of alert, before, during and after the opening of the polls.
Bolsonaro is complaining about the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, because he did not respond to a request to open an investigation into the complaint that twelve radio stations in the Northeast were not broadcasting his electoral propaganda. “He is desperate because he knows he is going to lose.” commented Lula.
A concerted effort of recommendations from his advisors dissuaded Bolsonaro from trying to hurl vilifications against the TSE president. And the coup announcement that many feared became a drop in the bucket. By the way, a coup is not announced, it is implemented.
Ricardo Noblat talks about Bolsonaro’s plans for Sunday night: since the votes in the northeast – where Lula leads – are the last to be counted, Bolsonaro will rush to announce his victory when he is ahead in the count. If the election ends with his defeat, he will say that the election was stolen from him and that he will react “within the four lines of the Constitution.” Or simply say it was stolen.
All the resources of the State to stay in office
But what has never, ever been seen before concerns the vast distribution of resources, exceeding 13.6 billion dollars in the attempt to buy votes, leaving a huge hole in the public accounts for 2023 and drastic cuts in resources destined for education and health, environmental protection and indigenous rights.
What no one manages to understand, much less explain, is how all this, from the spreading of scandalous lies to the scandalous distribution of public money both through “social benefits” and an illegal “secret budget”, happens in the face of the inactivity of the authorities, both of the Superior Electoral Court and the Federal Supreme Court, says writer and analyst Eric Nepomuceno.
Perhaps it is a sign of Jair Bolsonaro’s dishonesty in order not to abandon the prerogatives of the presidential chair and thus be able to evade the courts of justice. But it is also a dramatic demonstration of the extent to which Brazilians allow themselves to be manipulated.
“Apesar de você, amanhã há de ser outro dia. Eu pergunto a você. Onde vai se esconder da enorme euforia?” (In spite of you, tomorrow will be another day. Where are you going to hide from the enormous euphoria?), sang Chico Buarque.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/10/ ... autocracy/