Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Lula in high-stakes debate just hours before final vote

Brazilians on Sunday choose between a future of conservative values under a far-right leader or the hope of returning to a prosperous past presided over by a leftist. In this fiercely polarized country, many are simply voting against the candidate they despise.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva points to his track record improving Brazilians’ livelihoods while president from 2003 to 2010, and pledges to care for them again. Opposing da Silva is President Jair Bolsonaro, who appeals to religious conservatives and claims da Silva’s return to power would usher in communism, legalized drugs and abortion.

The candidates will square off in their final debate on Friday, less than 36 hours before polls open.

“This is anybody’s race, with Lula still the favourite, but by a small margin,” said Brian Winter, vice-president for policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. “People are going to be hanging on for dear life on Sunday watching these results come in.” 

For months, it appeared that da Silva — universally known as Lula — was headed for an easy victory. Some opinion polls had da Silva ahead by double digits; Bolsonaro finished within about five points, showing the difficulty of handicapping a race in a sprawling nation like Brazil. But analysts and politicians agree that the race has grown tight.

Bolsonaro, 67, has railed against Supreme Court justices and insistently cast doubt on the reliability of the nation’s electronic voting system, which analysts have warned is a clear sign that he could reject election results like former U.S. president and mutual admirer Donald Trump.

Violence has erupted on the campaign trail, with a local official in southern Brazil who supported Lula’s Workers Party shot and killed in July by a vocal Bolsonaro supporter. Bolsonaro nearly died in the 2018 election campaign when he was stabbed by a mentally ill assailant.

Bolsonaro has had little problem spending vast sums on the poor in the run-up to the vote. He expanded Brazil’s biggest welfare program, granted cooking gas vouchers to low-income citizens, gave 2.7 billion reais ($690 million Cdn) to taxi and truck drivers and announced a program to forgive up to 90 per cent of state bank debts for some four million people, among other measures.

Since July, an additional three million families have been added to the flagship welfare program and its spending was boosted. It cost 67.4 billion reais ($17.2 billion Cdn) in the first 10 months of the year, according to data from the Citizenship Ministry.

“Never has this amount of money been thrown to people at the same time, and the machinery been used in such an audacious way as Bolsonaro is doing,” said Thomas Traumann, an independent political analyst.

1st-round wake-up call

Analysts say that the Oct. 2 first-round closeness was a wake-up call for da Silva. The former president has kept focus on kindling nostalgia for his tenure, when tens of millions were rising into the middle class, eating well and travelling.

“Lula’s campaign is about the past — that is its biggest strength and biggest weakness,” said Winter. “It is the memory of boom years of the 2000s that makes people want to vote for him. But his unwillingness or inability to articulate new ideas and bring in fresh faces has left him somewhat helpless as Bolsonaro closes the gap.”

Most polls now show da Silva, who turned 77 on Thursday, with a narrow lead. On Oct. 22, his party’s president released a video saying that he will only win if everyone turns out to vote.

Some voters are holding their noses while voting. Bolsonaro has been a culture-war crusader, lambasting court rulings expanding gay rights. Brazil has seen 700,000 COVID-19 deaths during his tenure, as well as the worst Amazon rainforest deforestation in 15 years.

Meanwhile, some equate the Workers Party with corruption. Da Silva was jailed for 580 days as part of a sweeping corruption probe that led to a 2017 conviction, though the Supreme Court later annulled his convictions on the grounds that the judge was biased and had colluded with prosecutors.

“This is an election of rejection, not an election of choosing who represents one’s ideals best,” said Thiago de Aragao, director of strategy for Arko Advice. “The majority of Bolsonaro supporters don’t necessarily love Bolsonaro, or endorse him, but they hate Lula more. And vice versa. They’re two of the most rejected politicians in Brazil’s history.”

Da Silva has tapped centre-right Geraldo Alckmin, a former rival, as running mate — part of an effort to create a broad, pro-democracy front to counter Bolsonaro. But his campaign has hemorrhaged support among evangelical voters, who now comprise roughly one-third of Brazil’s population. Evangelicals were key to Bolsonaro’s election in 2018.

Both campaigns have been thin on plans, and much more engaged in mudslinging in person and on social media. To the extent that there have been proposals, they have centred on who will provide continued welfare, despite very limited fiscal room going forward.

In their Oct. 16 debate, da Silva scored points as he confronted Bolsonaro with criticism of his pandemic management, causing the incumbent to repeatedly fumble in attempting to muster a response. Later, the tables were turned as Bolsonaro attacked da Silva on his party’s recent history with corruption.