Jair Bolsonaro «painted a climate» for this second round of the Brazilian elections very different from the one he intended. The optimism that spread after the polls underestimated him in the first round and even as Sunday’s definitive appointment approached, some predicted a technical tie, has been deflated by the latest polls, which place him up to seven points below his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Aware of this, Bolsonaro’s team has even asked for the postponement of this Sunday’s appointment alleging, without evidence, that they would have been harmed in the distribution of electoral propaganda in the radio stations of the Northeast, an impregnable bastion of Lula against which the still president cannot even compensate with the results of other regions.
The complaint was dismissed by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) for lacking the «slightest hint of evidence». Dissatisfied with the ruling, Bolsonaro returned to launching coup insinuations and held an emergency meeting with high military commanders, announcing that he would go «to the last consequences» in this matter.
The fear that he would not recognize the results of these elections has been hovering for several months, coinciding with the release from prison of former president Lula and with it the recovery of his political rights.
By questioning the electoral system, Bolsonaro has heated up the mood among the most extreme part of his electorate, so that now the fear is of possible episodes of electoral violence, especially after the case of his former ally in Congress, Roberto Jefferson, who was shot by the police when he was about to be arrested for violating the conditions of his house arrest.
The euphoria that had settled in Bolsonaro’s headquarters in recent weeks coinciding with an improvement in the polls came to naught a few days ago when the latest Datafolha poll showed the attrition he would have suffered.
Bolsonaro was again his worst enemy when he said that a few years ago he had the opportunity («he painted a climate») to enter a house full of Venezuelan minors «14, 15 years old, all very beautiful», whom he insinuated were working as prostitutes. Statements to whip up the ghost of the Venezuela of chavismo to attack Lula.
HIS INHERITANCE FOR A RE-ELECTION Bolsonaro aspires this Sunday to remain another four years at the head of Brazil after a first legislature marked by his denialist management of the pandemic, his continuous attacks on democratic institutions, the pabulum he has given to false news and a return he did not count on, that of Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro, 67, has promised to continue with the same policies of the last four years, especially those related to the privatization of strategic state companies, such as the energy company Petrobras, with which he hopes to make possible one of his campaign promises, to have the cheapest fuel in the world.
Representative of the most conservative sectors of Brazil, he has never hidden his admiration for the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), and has gone through a dozen political forces until late last year when he joined the ranks of the Liberal Party (PL) in order to launch his candidacy.
Throughout these four years Bolsonaro has made the fight against corruption his main political banner and has presented himself in the campaign as the author of the fact that the country has managed to reduce poverty thanks to social aid programs that guarantee financial support to poor families, although these only lasted a few months in the midst of the pandemic.
His management of the health crisis has been widely criticized both outside and inside the country, so much so that it led to a parliamentary investigation that concluded that he had committed up to nine crimes. Not only did he minimize its scope, even describing the disease as a «little flu,» but he also recommended the use of ineffective remedies rather than the vaccine, the purchase of which he delayed.
The Brazilian president faces his reelection aspirations with at least six pending cases in the Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), bodies against which he has intensified his attacks in recent months, coinciding with the recovery of the political rights of former president Lula.
His triumph in the 2018 elections took place in a context replete with judicial arbitrariness, among them the arrest of Lula himself, who, as now, was ahead in the preferences of Brazilians. The Supreme Court concluded in 2021 that the process against the former president, conducted by the man who later became Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice, Sergio Moro, was biased and unfair.
The groups that most reject Bolsonaro are the unemployed, blacks, students, young people and women, a sector, the latter, that his campaign team has tried to seduce without success through the figure of the first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, the profile of a woman – conservative evangelical Christian who rejects the feminist agenda – in which she can still scratch some votes.
The indigenous issue is another of the issues that have been reproached, although it is true that these communities have been denouncing the neglect of previous governments. However, land demarcation policies were forgotten under his mandate, in whose first two years there was a sharp increase in invasions, murders, as well as illegal exploitation of resources.
