BRAZIL Key Election, Ex-Pres Lula 0ptimistic for Victory over Far Right Bolsonaro- 'No More Hatred'
‘We want no more hatred’: leftwing ex-president Lula on verge of comeback in Brazil.' The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2022. - Ed.
- Polls suggest Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is close to majority of votes needed to stop election run-off against Jair Bolsonaro.-
Brazil’s leftwing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appeared on the verge of a startling political comeback on Sunday as more than 156 million Brazilians took part in the country’s most important election in decades. As the veteran ex-president cast his vote in Brazil’s industrial heartlands on Sunday morning, Lula voiced optimism he was heading for victory over the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. - “We want no more hatred, no more quarrelling, we want a country that lives in peace,” the 76-year-old told reporters in São Bernardo do Campo, the city where he began his legendary political career as a unionist in the 1970s.
Polls on the eve of the election suggested Lula – who governed from 2003 to 2010 – was tantalisingly close to securing the overall majority of votes he needs to avoid a 2nd -round runoff against Bolsonaro in late October. One poll gave Lula 51% to Bolsonaro’s 37%, another gave them 50% and 36% respectively. A Lula victory would represent the latest in a series of triumphs for a resurgent Latin American left, following the election of leftist leaders in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile.
- “I’m going to win these elections so I can give the people the right to be happy again. The people need, deserve and have the right … to be happy once more,” Lula told journalists as he wrapped up his campaigning with a parade through the streets of São Paulo on Saturday.
The prospect of a Lula victory has galvanised leftwing and centrist Brazilians after 4 years under Bolsonaro during which nearly 700,000 people died of Covid and more than 30 million were plunged into poverty and hunger.
“I feel hope,” Lula friend Fernando Morais said. He considered Lula’s return to power the only way to tackle the intensifying “social tragedy” that was on full show at the polling station in downtown São Paulo. “When you go out at night around here … only 1km from the homes of bankers & big businessmen, you see people freezing to death,” he said at a square where dozens of emaciated people had taken shelter under filthy blankets & in tents. A giant banner by anti-Bolsonaro activists read: “Brazil has gotten worse”. “This didn’t exist 10 years ago … It’s like an improvised refugee camp,” he said. “Today is a day of hope,” said Eduardo Horderle Peruzzo, a Univ, of São Paulo historian. “We know that this election won’t fix everything. We know this is the beginning of a long path. But we want Brazil to at least be able to dream of the future again.”
“So many of the advances that took decades to achieve have been destroyed over the last 4 years,” said his partner, music teacher Mariana Moga de Moura Silva. Bolsonaro, a Trump-admiring former army captain, was defiant as he cast his vote in a military neighbourhood on the outskirts of Rio, where he built his political career. “I’m confident from what I’m seeing,” the 67-year-old populist told reporters. But polls suggest more than half of Brazilians now reject Bolsonaro, on whose watch Amazon deforestation has soared to record levels & Brazil has become an international outcast. - Bolsonaro’s authoritarian inclinations and relentless questioning of Brazil’s electronic voting system have fuelled concerns he may refuse to accept defeat to Lula... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/02/we-want-no-more-hatred-leftwing-ex-president-lula-on-verge-of-comeback-in-brazil
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