October 2, 2022, 23:12 PM
October 2, 2022, 23:12 PM
The former president of Brazil and winner of the first electoral round this Sunday, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, declared himself hopeful of achieving victory in the second round to be held on October 30.
“We are going to win the elections,” Lula said with a broken voice after so many days of campaigning in a speech at a hotel in Sao Paulo, where he was accompanied by other leaders of his party.
The leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), described this Sunday’s result as “an extension”, when won in the first round by a tighter margin than the polls indicated for his rival, President Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula wanted to encourage his followers after obtaining a worse result than the polls predicted. “I have 30 more days to campaign; I love campaigning,” she declared.
He also summoned his rival to a debate, who during the campaign assured that the only possibility that he would lose the election is that there was some fraud. “It will be the first opportunity to hold a face-to-face debate with the President of the Republic to find out if he is going to continue telling lies or if he is going to tell the Brazilian people the truth at least once in his life.”
In a much tighter vote than the polls predicted and with more than 99% of the votes counted, the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won 48.33% of the votes, compared to 43.28% for the current Brazilian president. far-right, Jair Bolsonaro.
The second round, which will be held on October 30, is now more uncertain than ever, after Bolsonaro came out in the first vote better off than the forecasts indicated.
Bolsonaro: “Certain changes could be for the worse”
For his part, Bolsonaro appeared after the count and acknowledged that Lula’s partial victory shows that there is a “will to change in Brazil,” but warned that “certain changes may be for the worse.”
The president partly attributed his defeat to the effect of inflation. “The increase in the prices of the products was felt,” he said, although he stressed that his government “has not stopped serving the poorest”, alluding to the subsidies approved in recent months and which were described by some critics as as electoralists.
Bolsonaro, however, was confident that he will be able to overcome the disadvantage with respect to his rival in what remains until the second round.
“We have a second round ahead” and “we will be able to show the population that inflation is going down,” he said.
With a more serene tone than he usually exhibits, the president announced that in the remainder of the campaign he will try to convince Brazilians that “a change to the left is always worse,” and he gave Chile, Colombia and Argentina as examples.
This time there were no questions about the result or allusions to the ghost of fraud that had stirred up in the previous weeks of the campaign.
Many analysts have pointed out that both he and Lula will have to attract the most moderate voters and the many who abstained in the first round if they want to finally win the presidency.
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