Brazil: Lula and Bolsonaro shuffle and give back | Heading to the polls on October 30 after the first phase of elections

From Sao Paulo

Brazil It’s a complex gigantography, like a mechano game where all the pieces don’t fit in their place. Elections in First round They confirmed two records. The distorting power of opinion polls has prompted the PT legend to believe that this is a quick end to the cycle of the far right. That did not happen and subjective production ran in one direction, giving Lula’s candidacy to the winner with more than 50%. A hypothetical victory without a second turn, even an actual victory of more than five percentage points, turned into an unsettling feeling that would surely disappear along the way. October 30th.

A difference in the President’s plan Jair Bolsonaro And the votes he got, the idea of ​​his defeat was not a figment of the imagination of the advisers. This is an established fact. The militarized formula he concluded with retired General Walter Braga Neto failed and his troops suffered a coup.

Nothing will end in the coming days, it’s true. But Lula has already begun to promote a coalition policy with the parties of Senator Simone Tebet and Ciro Gomez., of MDB and PDT. Second, his former minister and rival who attacked him most in the election campaign had already tested him. Marina Silva. During PT’s first national government the environment chief shared the cabinet with him. Yesterday, at a press conference in the city, he announced: “Now we will need everyone. He knows that”, he said of one of the losers in the election who was relegated to fourth place.

PT officials and their allies began their meetings so that the one-and-a-half point Lula lacked on Sunday the 2nd would become a majority guaranteeing victory by the end of the month. With 48.43% of the vote, his advantage over Bolsonaro (43.20) exceeded five points.. These percentages represent 6,187,171 more votes for the candidacy of the historic leader, who today has moved further to the center due to polarization, and will meet again with the man he defines as “a genocidal president”. For his lackadaisical and cynical role during the pandemic that claimed the lives of nearly 700,000 Brazilians.

Get out of the comfort zone

In Ballista Newspaper Folha, one of its most experienced columnists, Igor Kiolo, pointed out that it was not enough for Lula to keep talking about “love” and that she needed to leave her “comfort” zone. The reality is that it will be forced to consolidate its electoral base at the Centre Urban middle class, particularly in the southeastern and southern states of the country, with the exception of Minas Gerais, where the election was unfavorable. Another expert in election analysis, journalist Thomas Tramon of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, contributed. “The advisers’ challenge now is to find the ‘hidden vote’ for Bolsonaro Not received in past months. Perhaps an embarrassing vote”.

scared The rise of the far right The bigger problem is that the current president represents vulgarity on a planetary scale. It is almost a stark fact to explain it. Bolsonaro is to Brazil what Donald Trump is to America or Santiago Abascal from Vox is to Spain. Today he presides over a nation of nearly 214 million people. Population growth rate was negative in 2021 for the first time in history due to official policy during the Covid-19 tsunami.

Even so, one of the people most responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe of the pandemic, The Minister of Health, retired General Eduardo Pazuello, He was the second vice-chancellor in the election Most voted Rio de Janeiro. This is just one example that illustrates the complex geography of the Brazilian vote. The polls of the same dehumanized city no longer seem full of charm – as the popular song says – but the millions of bequests that came with Bolsonaro, his health officer and gubernatorial candidate running for re-election. Lawyer and gospel singer Claudio Castro won with nearly 60 percent of the vote. The military leader’s projected percentage for his own election was not enough.

Lula will return to government for a third term after two presidencies and at the age of 76, in the unfavorable environment of highly populated states such as Rio de Janeiro. He turned 77 three days before the second shift. But his biographical profile does not reflect his vitality, charisma, ability to connect with people and reach voters. Ten years his junior, Bolsonaro travels in his regular motorcycle rallies and, if exaggeration is allowed, his opponent probably has the kilometers he has walked in many political campaigns over three decades.

This tricky second election dispute will define Brazil’s fate for the next four years. It throws out inaccurate, unverifiable data that doesn’t cast the far-right politician in a good light. As for the elections he won in 2018, he lost almost seven million votes. He was far from the aspirations of his most unconditional voters, with Bolsonaro boasting in the days leading up to the vote that he would have the support of 70 million Brazilians. All life is a dream, and dreams, dreams… Calderón de la Barca would say.

Another fact. Lula received 25 million more votes than the candidacy of his potential political successor, Fernando Haddad. In 2018, the PT seemed headed for irreversible decline when a tsunami of ex-captain and applauded support of the dictatorship wiped out all electoral forecasts. With the results released this Sunday, that situation is no longer possible. Lula and his own fragmented organization of forces, while empathizing with the left who respect him as an ally and a more phony coexistence with his right, will have to strike a balance to keep growing towards the key date.

The former president’s 4.6 million followers on Twitter checked yesterday where he suggested to go at this decisive moment: “We are going to increase our advantage in the northeast, in Minas Gerais. I will visit many more areas. And my advice is: from tomorrow we will talk less between ourselves and more with the voters. We often talk to people who don’t like us because of fake news,” he said.

Lula He was more confident than Sunday night and dropped a strong phrase: “We are experts in winning runoff elections. We have a country agenda to challenge the current president, a climate debate. Discuss employment generation, SUS (Unified Health System), many issues we need to discuss.

While PT’s leader is starting to channel more electoral spirit into his militancy, to maintain and build on what he has achieved, his rival in the second round is already out to show where he is going in the coming days. . The government machinery is at his disposal, Social assistance will continue to be distributed, His closed preaching was not caught there, not even with the support of his flock of like-minded evangelical pastors. Most removed sectors.

The day after he confirmed he would be in the second round, his government expected to advance the Aid Brazil program to the 11th of this month. It was scheduled on the 18th. Wellbeing at full speed is like the high-powered Triumph motorcycle he uses to cruise the highways of this Latin American giant. Of course later he will ask what the street makes him feel. He doesn’t want to know anything, as polls show him as a loser with no chance of a rematch on October 30. But Lula should not trust them either because of their success or failure in the media. The forecast for rain in San Pablo hit precisely what the advisors couldn’t.

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