More on tonight’s Braqzil election resul
“I think Bolsonaro has the momentum,” said Thomas Traumann, a Rio de Janeiro-based political observer, although he believed Lula was still the favourite. “It’s a very disappointing night for the left.”
Bolsonaro is also accused of wreaking havoc on the environment and catastrophically mishandling a Covid epidemic that killed nearly 700,000 Brazilians, by undermining vaccination and containment efforts and peddling quack cures.
“It’s been a joke-slash-tragedy,” restaurant host Gabriela Leoncio said of Bolsonaro’s administration as she cast her vote for Lula on Sunday morning in São Paulo.
Despite that, Bolsonaro confounded the forecasts of pollsters in several key states, including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Prominent Bolsonaristas were elected to Brazil’s congress and as state governors, including Bolsonaro’s former health minister, Eduardo Pazzuelo, who became a congressman for Rio, and his former environment minister Ricardo Salles. Rio’s Bolsonaro-supporting governor Cláudio Castro was re-elected while one of Bolsonaro’s most controversial former ministers, the evangelical preacher Damares Alves, claimed a place in the senate. Tarcísio de Freitas, Bolsonaro’s candidate for the governorship of São Paulo, also performed better than pollsters predicted and will face Lula ally Fernando Haddad in a second round.
There was defiance from Lula and his allies as the right-wing successes and the need for a second round became clear.
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Thiago Amparo, an academic and columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, said the right’s stronger-than-forecast showing showed Bolsonaro and Bolsonarismo were “alive and kicking”.
“There was a feeling among the left that Lula had a chance to win in the first round … the results show that it was wishful thinking to imagine the election would serve as a way to punish Bolsonaro for his disastrous policies during the pandemic.”
“I feel exhausted,” Amparo added. “But the results show we do not have the time to rest now. It is time to go out onto the streets … otherwise we are going to have a very dark future again.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/oct/03/brazil-elections-2022-jair-bolsonaro-lula-latest-results-live-updates