Next fraud or something honest in sight?
Brazil election goes to the wire after ill-tempered final TV debate
Veteran leftist Lula da Silva holds slender poll lead over Jair Bolsonaro as national divide grows before Sunday vote
The two political heavyweights vying to become Brazil’s next president have locked horns during the final television debate before a momentous election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the global climate emergency and the future of one of the world’s largest democracies.
The former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro faced off in Rio at the studios of Brazil’s biggest broadcaster, with eve of election polls giving Lula a slender but not unassailable lead.
During the tetchy encounter, Lula accused Bolsonaro of catastrophically mishandling a Covid outbreak that has killed nearly 700,000 Brazilians, arming organised crime by loosening gun laws, and trashing the Amazon and Brazil’s international reputation. “Brazil is more isolated than Cuba …. We have become a pariah,” the 77-year-old leftist said, castigating Bolsonaro’s “insane behaviour”.
Bolsonaro, who was visibly nervous and lost his footing on stage several times, repeatedly called Lula a liar and highlighted the corruption scandals that tarnished the 14 years in which the ex-president’s Workers’ party (PT) governed from 2003 to 2016. “Lula, you’re a crook,” Bolsonaro fumed. “Your government was a champion in corruption.”
“He’s a one-note samba,” Lula hit back, citing one of bossa nova legend Tom Jobim’s most famous songs.
In his closing statement, Bolsonaro became confused and announced that, God willing, he would be re-elected to Brazil’s congress, where he served for nearly three decades until reinventing himself as an anti-establishment outsider before being elected president in 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/29/brazil-election-tv-debate-lula-bolsonaro