Brazil: Lula and Bolsonaro mix and give again | After the first round of elections and on its way to the polls on October 30

from Sao Paulo

Brazil It’s a complex behemoth, like a mecano game where not all the pieces fit into place. elections in first round They believed in two impressions. The distorting power of opinion polls has fueled Labor’s epic belief in a swift end to the far-right cycle. It didn’t, and the production of the autobiography that gave Lola the winner’s nomination by more than 50%, worked one way. The hypothetical victory without a second turn, even the actual victory by more than five percentage points, turned into a feeling of unease that would surely disappear on the way to October 30.

The difference with the president’s project Jair Bolsonaro The votes he got is that the perception of his defeat did not come from the counselors’ imaginations. It is a concrete fact. He lost the military formula he had completed with retired General Walter Braga Neto and his forces were dealt a blow.

Nothing is final in the coming days, that’s right. But Lula has already begun to encourage political alliances with the parties of Senators Simon Tibet and Ciro Gomez.And the MDB and PDT. The second, his ex-minister and perhaps the rival who attacked him the most in the election campaign, had tried to do it Marina Silva. The environmental leader participated in the cabinet with him during the first national government of the Labor Party. Yesterday, at a meeting with journalists in this city, he declared: “For now we will need everyone. And he knows it ”, when he hinted at one of the most famous losers in the elections, he relegated to fourth place.

Labor authorities and their allies began their meetings so that the point and a half that Lula missed on the second Sunday would be the majority that would guarantee victory at the end of the month. With 48.43% of the vote, his advantage over Bolsonaro (43.20) is more than five points. These percentages represent 6,187,171 additional votes to nominate the historic leader, today he has moved more to the center because of polarization and because he will once again face what he calls “the president of genocide.” For his lackluster and cynical role during the pandemic that has killed nearly 700,000 Brazilians.

Get out of your comfort zone

In the newspaper Polista Fulha, one of the most experienced columnists, Igor Gelo, noted that it would not be enough for Lola to continue talking about “love” and that he would have to leave his “comfort” zone. The truth is that it will have to consolidate its electoral base among urban middle class, especially in the southeastern and southern states of the country, where the elections were negative, with the exception of Minas Gerais. Another specialist in electoral analysis, journalist Thomas Truman of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, contributed to this The challenge now for the advisers is to find the ‘hidden vote’ for Bolsonaro that have not been received in the past months. Perhaps an embarrassing vote.”

fucking The far right advances That the current president brazenly represents on a planetary scale is the biggest problem. Its interpretation is almost a simple fact. Bolsonaro for Brazil is what Donald Trump is for the United States or Santiago Abascal from Fox to Spain. Today he heads a country with a population of approximately 214 million people. For the first time in history, it had a negative population growth rate in 2021 due to official policy during the Covid-19 tsunami.

However, one of the most responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in the pandemic, Minister of Health, retired General Eduardo Pazuelo, In the elections he was the second deputy Most voted in Rio de Janeiro. This is one example that illustrates the complex geography of the Brazilian vote. The same dehumanization was applied to voting in a wonderful city no longer filled with magic – as the folk song says – but by the millions of wills that accompanied Bolsonaro, the health official and gubernatorial candidate who was running for re-election. Claudio Castro, lawyer and gospel singer, won about 60 percent of the vote. The percentage that the military president expected to be elected was not enough.

Lula will face his third return to government in the unfavorable context of densely populated states such as Rio de Janeiro, after two presidential terms and at the age of 76. Three days before his second transformation, he will be seventy-seven. But his biological image does not reflect his vitality, his attractiveness and his ability to integrate with people and reach the electorate that he still aspires to penetrate. Ten years younger, Bolsonaro travels in his frequent motorcycling rallies and, if allowed to exaggerate, perhaps the kilometers his opponent has covered in many political campaigns for more than three decades.

This second electoral controversy will determine the fate of Brazil for the next four years, It throws accurate, unverifiable statements that don’t leave the far-right politician in a good light. In terms of the elections he won in 2018, he lost nearly seven million votes. He was far from the aspirations of most of his unconditional voters who bragged in the days leading up to the vote that Bolsonaro would win the support of 70 million Brazilians. That all life is a dream, dreams, dreams … Calderon de la Barca will say.

Another fact. Lula added 25 million more votes than to nominate his potential political heir, Fernando Haddad. In 2018, when the tsunami of the former captain and the dictator’s welcome deputy swept all election expectations, Labor seemed to be headed for an irreversible decline. With the results published on Sunday, this situation is no longer possible. Although Lula and the composition of his dispersed forces, the sympathy of the left who respects him as an ally and the illusory coexistence of his right wing, he will have to strike a balance to continue growing towards the prime date.

Yesterday the 4.6 million followers of the ex-president on Twitter checked where he proposes to go at this crucial moment: “We will increase our advantage in the Northeast, in Minas Gerais. I will visit more regions. And my advice is: from tomorrow there will be less talk between us And it will increase the conversation with the electorate. We will talk to those who seem to dislike us, often because of fake news.”

Lola He was more upbeat than she had been on Sunday night and left a powerful statement:We are experts at winning second-round elections. We have a country programme, a debate on the climate issue, to oppose the current president. Job creation, SUS (Unified Health System), discussed many issues that need to be discussed.”

As the Labor leader begins to transfer high doses of electoral mood to his struggle, to preserve and increase what he has achieved, his opponent in the second round has already come out to show the way to where he will go in the coming days. With the state apparatus at his disposal, will continue to distribute social assistance, There where the preaching of darkness does not spreadNot even with the support of his flock of like-minded evangelical pastors. the most disadvantaged sectors.

The day after it was confirmed that he would be in the second round, his government expected that it would bring the payments of the Brazilian aid plan to the eleventh of this month. It was planned in the eighteenth. Well-being at full speed, like that of his powerful Triumph motorcycle that he uses to travel the highways of this Latin American giant. Surely later he will hear the sensation that the street brings him back. With polls showing him losing with no chance of a rematch on October 30th, he doesn’t want to know anything. But Lula shouldn’t trust them because of the failed victory they exposed in the media. San Pablo’s rainfall forecast hit exactly what the consultants couldn’t do.