Brazil witnessed this Thursday one of the most tense and violent debates in recent democratic history, with President Jair Bolsonaro launching his arsenal of accusations, including false news, against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in search of climbing in the polls. to avoid being defeated on Sunday and force a second round.
With Bolsonaro as a machine gun against Lula, the rest of the candidates also contributed to the president by joining in criticizing the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), who has 50% of the voting intentions and has a mathematical chance of winning the presidency on Sunday, according to Datafolha.
Instead, the head of state refused to answer two questions keys formulated by the candidate Soraya Trhonicke, paradoxically a former ally: if he is going to accept the result of Sunday’s elections and if he has been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“Liar, former prisoner, traitor to the country, your children stole millions of companies,” Bolsonaro shot in a debate on TV Globo, the biggest event of the end of the campaign in Brazil, which became a personal classic between the Planalto boss and the former metallurgical trade unionist.
“In my government there was no corruption,” Bolsonaro said, who called Lula a “liar” and an “ex-convict”recalling the processes that the former president was subjected to for the diversion of funds through contractors of the state oil company Petrobras, and linked the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) with illicit associations.
“Is he talking about illicit association?” Lula replied, adding: “You need to look in the mirror and see what is happening in your government. Respect who you are looking at, your 10-year-old daughter is looking at you, don’t lie. People will send you home on October 2.”
Bolsonaro’s accusations and Lula’s responses turned the debate largely into a duel over the polarization of Sunday’s elections.
Also participating in the debate were Ciro Gomes, from the Democratic Labor Party, third in the polls, Simone Tebet, from the Brazilian Democracy Movement (MDB), Soraya Thrnokie, from the right-wing Brazil Union, Felipe Dávila, from the Novo Party, and Father Kelmon, of the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB).
Bolsonaro found Ciro Gomes as an allywho was Lula’s minister for three years between 2003 and 2010 but devoted his campaign to a personal crusade against his former ally.
but above all Bolsonaro was helped by the great unknown of the night, Kelmon Souza, who introduces himself as Father Kelmon for belonging to a group called the Orthodox Church of Peru, of the far-right Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), a kind of tropical Qanon that emulates the segregationist and conspiratorial group that supports Donald Trump in the United States.
As the PTB has deputies -only the seven candidates whose parties have parliamentary representation participated in the debate and the other four were left out-, the candidate with 0% voting intention took the opportunity to be an auxiliary line of Bolsonaro in hitting Lula for the scandals Corruption of Operation Lava Jato.
“You are a figurehead for Bolsonaro in this debate, you are not even a priest, you are disguised as a priest, you should not be here,” Lula told Kelmon, who insisted on the corruption of the PT and argued that the left “destroys the minds of the young people in college and they vindicate “Huevara”, as he called the Cuban-Argentine guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara.
Thronicke infuriated Kelmon by calling him a “disguised priest of the feasts of Saint John.” Kelmon said that everyone needs “catechesis.”
The debate, with this priest, reduced his climate of tension. There was even laughter after the unprecedented tension applied by Bolsonaro, who barely said a proposal: that he will try to maintain the Brazil Aid, the social plan that he executed in the second half of this year, called an electoral device.
During his speeches, Bolsonaro was questioned by the rest for having allowed in Congress the so-called secret budget that dominates the block called Centrao in Congress and said that “it does not control what happens in Petrobras” because he is not a “dictator”.
Lula took advantage of his time and the talks to defend his legacy as the greatest government of social inclusion when Gomes foisted on him that the PT model allowed the concentration of income.
“Ciro, you are nervous, you experienced my government as the greatest government of social conquest in history in which everyone earned money,” stressed the PT leader.
Bolsonaro, meanwhile, was questioned by Tebet about caring for the environment and the president linked criticism of his policy towards the Amazon as an attack on agribusiness. “Agribusiness loves me,” said the president. Instead, the senator accused him of being responsible for “the greatest deforestation of the last 15 years.”
Bolsonaro said that one of his great contributions was having allowed the population in the countryside to have extended facilities for carrying weapons, especially women. “I am in favor of women,” emphasized the president, who has the great deficit of his campaign in the female electorate.
Bolsonaro was called a “coward” by Senator Tebet when he asked her about Celso Daniel, a PT mayor assassinated in 2002 who, according to the president, had a murky death linked to internal disputes.
He was also consulted by Gomes and Lula about the purchase of 51 properties in cash for 5 million dollars in the last 30 years and the allegations of corruption in his government, such as the purchase of vaccines. with requests for bribes or bribes in gold requested by officials of the Ministry of Education.
Bolsonaro accused the PT governors of the northeast region of having diverted money from respirators during the pandemic, after being accused by most of his rivals of having been responsible for the almost 700,000 deaths due to his actions against quarantine and mass vaccination.
The Globo debate is the last great moment before the prohibition of propaganda in the media: the candidates will participate in walks on Friday and Saturday but without being able to carry out large acts to prepare for the vote on Sunday.
The influence of the debate can be detected in the Datafolha poll scheduled for Saturday.
