Brazil’s election is nearing its final stretch. Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT) is still the favourite, but current president Jair Bolsonaro is in with a chance.

Lula remains ahead with a strong to moderate lead in the polls. The polling in the first round more or less got his level of support correct, but severely underestimated Bolsonaro’s support. While Bolsonaro still needs to win over significantly more voters than Lula to win, Lula’s rejection levels are too close to Bolsonaro’s for comfort and his extreme-right rival still stands a decent chance of winning.

The election now will come down to who can win over the remaining undecided voters: those who voted for a third-party candidate, abstained or spoilt their ballot in the first round of the election. Given that both candidates face high rejection rates, this is a battle to define which candidate is the lesser evil for Brazil.

The main battlegrounds are the three most populous states in the country — São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro — all of which had an abstention rate of more than 21% in the first round.

Bolsonaro won São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro by handy margins in the first round, while Lula carried Minas Gerais. The question is whether Lula can find a way to get past ingrained anti-PT sentiment. 

Fighting fire with fire

With just under two weeks to go, accusations of paedophilia, cannibalism and satanism have been the dominant themes of the second round of the elections, rather than the economy. One could be forgiven for assuming this was just another example of the type of degenerate right-wing disinformation campaign that has been plaguing the world for the past few years, but in the case of Brazil this is only partially true.

The PT has decided that it will not shut up and take the hits from the right, but to take on Bolsonaro and his disinformation machine at their own game. The left is playing dirty, but given this is Brazil, the truth is usually weirder than any fake news.

First, there is the matter of cannibalism. A clip surfaced from an interview given by Bolsonaro, then a relatively minor federal deputy, to The New York Times in 2016.

In the interview, after commenting how he did not have sex with any women in Haiti because they were “unhygienic”, he bragged to the reporter that he “nearly ate an Indian” during a visit to an indigenous community in the Amazon. It should be noted that the community in question does not practice cannibalism and the trip seems like another racist right-wing fantasy.

Second, there is the matter of paedophilia. Last Friday, during a podcast on Brazil’s largest media network, Bolsonaro told how he met some “pretty little 14- or 15-year-old Venezuelan girls” during a motorcycle rally, felt some sexual chemistry and went back to their house, only to discover they were prostitutes.

The girls in question are not sex workers and are under court-appointed protection after they refused to feature in pro-Bolsonaro campaign videos. The following day, PT influencers flooded social networks with clips of the interview and accusations that the president was a paedophile. The Bolsonaro campaign was temporally thrown into disarray and the man himself described the day after the clip surfaced as “the worst 24 hours of my life”.

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To make matters worse, the first presidential debate was scheduled for that Sunday. However, Bolsonaro was saved from having to face questions about his comments by the most unlikely of allies — the head of the Superior Electoral Court, Judge Alexandre de Moraes, whom Bolsonaro had repeatedly called “a scoundrel”, issued a verdict forcing the PT to take down all materials related to the interview, the same verdict he issued regarding the cannibalism story.

Bear in mind these were both unedited clips from interviews in which Brazil’s president told the stories unsolicited by the interviewers. Bolsonaro tried to do some damage control by sending his wife and an allied senator (who is in hot water for making up a perverted story about child sex trafficking) to meet Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s “ambassador”. He also released a bizarre video apology featuring his wife. The same day, numerous other videos of other interviews surfaced in which Bolsonaro repeated the story about “the pretty little Venezuelan girls” who were actually prostitutes.

As part of his strategy, Bolsonaro has been trying to tell everyone who will listen that Lula will close the churches if elected and is the candidate of Satan.

The promoters of Lula’s strategy say it is a war and this election can’t be won without playing dirty. Others have complained that the election marks a new low in Brazilian politics. But that’s not quite true.

The 2018 election, the election in 2014 and Brazil’s first direct election after democracy was restored in 1989 also featured vicious wars of attrition in which mud was hurled in large quantities.

The finale of the 1989 election saw the victorious candidate and current Bolsonaro ally Fernando Collor de Mello wheeling out Lula’s ex-girlfriend and illegitimate child, claiming that Lula had tried to force her to get an abortion. Lula was unable to respond to the smears due to legal restrictions on election advertising in the days immediately preceding the election.

Collor was impeached (after resigning) in 1992 following a particularly sordid corruption scandal involving a million-dollar slush fund created through shaking down businesses, which was managed by his used-car salesman turned political fixer, PC Farias (who later died in one of history’s least convincing suicides after allegedly being involved in very high-level drug trafficking). The full story of Collor’s presidency and the black magic, the drugs, and the fact that the whole thing was triggered by him supposedly sleeping, or attempting to sleep with, his brother’s wife, is beyond the scope of a single article.

The first showdown

The head-to-head debate between the two candidates was held at a reasonable hour (debates normally only start at around 10pm) with a new format last Sunday. The debate itself was a more or less equal affair, with Lula winning a very close victory or a draw.

Lula came strongly out the gate, hammering Bolsonaro for his response to Covid-19 and his failures in social policy. Bolsonaro mounted a comeback in the final segment of the debate and landed some big shots of his own, while Lula stumbled over responding to questions about the corruption scandals under PT governments. He also misused his time, allowing Bolsonaro to deliver an uninterrupted five-minute monologue in which he alleged that Lula was trying to turn Brazil into Venezuela, close the churches and was supported by the country’s biggest drug traffickers.

Lula is one of the greatest communicators to have emerged in politics anywhere, but has never been the most gifted debater; the other problem is that it is difficult to debate a pathological liar like Bolsonaro.

During the debate, Bolsonaro claimed that Lula had exploited his dead wife for political support and made the demonstrably false charge that Lula’s government was responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon. Bolsonaro also insulted the millions of Brazilians who live in the country’s favelas by implying they were all drug traffickers.

The other notable takeaway from the debate was the return of disgraced ex-judge and now Senator Sergio Moro to Bolsonaro’s side after their brief breakup. The former anti-corruption judge was trotted out as a sort of mascot, appearing side by side with members of the Progressitas, the former PP (Progressive Party) — the most corrupt party in Brazilian politics. The talk is that Moro’s return to the fold came at the cost of a future Supreme Court nomination if Bolsonaro is elected.

The religious divide 

One of the major battlegrounds over the next two weeks will be religion. For years, Brazil’s Catholic population has shrunk as evangelical churches have risen, enjoying untold wealth and political power. While Catholics still constitute around 50% of the population, evangelicals are the future. 

Lula leads among Catholics, who comprise about 50% of the population, but Bolsonaro leads by a two-to-one margin among evangelicals. Evangelical churches, according to a recent report by BBC Brasil, intimidate and threaten members of the flock who dare stray away from Bolsonaro, and have become increasingly aggressive and disrespectful towards the Catholic Church. Things are so bad that a cardinal had to explain that red was the official colour of his position, not an indication that he was a leftie, after suffering from a wave of online attacks.

Bolsonaro, who still claims to be a Catholic, may face a backlash due to his supporters’ aggression and even violent acts against the old church. However, Lula will also face an uphill battle to win over evangelical voters, given that pro-Bolsonaro Telegram groups are full of conspiracy theories aimed at winning over evangelical voters, including the idea that PT policies will forcefully implement unisex toilets at all schools and force people to eat insects. 

What’s next?  

While Bolsonaro faces a difficult challenge in terms of winning over millions of votes, Lula’s pitch in the second round is struggling to attract undecideds, third-party voters and those who spoilt their ballot or abstained in the first round.

Ingrained anti-PT sentiment is a strong obstacle to surpass and even with the endorsement of third-party candidates and ex-presidents such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso, known for their strong critiques of Lula, many voters still cannot stomach voting for the PT.

The other factor riding in Bolsonaro’s favour is that Congress has essentially granted him a licence to turn on the money taps, allowing him to approve billions of dollars in extra social spending as part of what is a blatant attempt to buy votes.

Bolsonaro is still in with a chance, and the thought that millions more Brazilians than the 51 million who voted for him in the first round may decide he is the lesser evil is rather too much for my analytical capacities at present. DM