A nail-biter for Lula, the candidate who stabbed Lula in the early stage of the re-election campaign

Despite preelection polls giving da Silva, who is widely known as Lula, a double-digit lead, the race was a nail-biter. da Silva won with about 99% of the votes counted, but he had trailed for much of the night. President Bolsonro was the runner-up in the race.

Both have been seen on the campaign trail flanked by security and police, even wearing bulletproof vests at times. BolsonFaro wore his as he kicked off his re- election campaign in the city of Juiz de Fora where he was stabbed while campaigning for president. There was a homemade stink bomb launched into a crowd of Da Silva’s fans in Rio de Brazil back in July and he was seen wearing a vest during an event there.

“Four years ago I couldn’t vote because I had been the victim of a lie in this country. And four years later, I’m here, voting with the recognition of my total freedom and with the possibility of being president of the republic of this country again, to try to make this country return to normality,” Lula said.

BolsonFaro said he traveled to every state in Brazil during the 45 days he was campaigning.

Because the vote is conducted electronically, preliminary results are usually out within minutes, with the final result available a few hours later. All polls will close at 5p.m. Brasilia time.

Bolsonaro, 67, is running for re-election under the conservative Liberal Party. He has campaigned to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He will continue to pay R$ 600 a month for the Auxilio Brasil.

Lula, 76, who was president for two consecutive terms, from 2003 to 2011, has focused his campaign on getting Bolsonaro out of office and has highlighted his past achievements throughout his campaign.

A metalworker who rose from poverty to the presidency, Da Silva is credited with establishing an extensive social welfare program during his tenure that helped lift millions of people into the middle class.

Defusing the ballot box to stop the riot: Bolsonaro claims he won the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections

Electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced Sunday evening. Results of the last few elections were officially declared within two to three hours after voting ended.

Rocha’s reseach shows that refusing to concede would be damaging for Bolsonaro’s public image among his own supporters. She told CNN that Bolsonaro would have to accept the result if he were to lose.

On Saturday, he repeated claims that he will win in the first round of presidential elections “with a margin higher than 60%,” despite being 14 points behind in the most recent poll that day.

Luis Valejo, a Bolsonaru supporter, said the President won the election at the ballot box and they deceived the ballot boxes to put the other candidate ahead.

Critics have warned that such talk could lead to outbreaks of violence or even refusal to accept the election result among some Brazilians – pointing to the January 6, 2021, riot incited by Trump after he lost the vote.

Last weekend, police registered two fatal incidents in states on opposite ends of the country. Police in Ceara say a man was stabbed to death in a bar after he identified himself as a supporter of Brazil’s president. And authorities in southern Santa Catarina state say a man wearing a Bolsonaro T-shirt was also fatally stabbed during a violent discussion with a man whom witnesses identified as a Workers’ Party supporter.

According to a Datafolha poll conducted in August, more than 67% of voters in Brazil are afraid of being “physically attacked” due to their political affiliations. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has banned firearms within 100 meters (330 feet) of any polling station on election day.

The polling shows that there are fewer undecided voters this year than in the past, so there could be a number of abstentions.

Recent opinion polls have given da Silva a commanding lead — the last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of two percentage points.

Agatha de Carvalho, 24, arrived to her local voting station in Rio de Janeiro’s working class Rocinha neighborhood shortly before it opened, hoping to cast her ballot before work, but found 100 others were already lined up. She said she was voting for da Silva.

The braneworld of Luis Bolsonaro: What have we learned about him in his first four years in power? Why did he not vote for him?

“A lot of people died because of him during the pandemic. She said that some deaths could have been avoided if he’d done things differently.

Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.

But he has built a devoted base by defending traditional family values, rebuffing political correctness and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

Despite higher welfare payments, more than 30 million people in Brazil are going hungry despite a slow economic recovery. Like several of its Latin American neighbors coping with high inflation and a vast number of people excluded from formal employment, Brazil is considering a shift to the political left.

Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru are among the left-leaning leaders in the region who have recently assumed power.

Da Silva’s convictions for corruption and money-laundering prevented him from running in the presidential race, even though he was favored to win against Bolsonaro. The Supreme Court later annulled da Silva’s convictions on the grounds that the judge was biased and colluded with prosecutors.

I did not vote for him again after the scandals in his first administration. I’m going to do it because I think that he was wrongly imprisoned, and it makes everyone else look better.

Speaking after casting his ballot in São Bernardo do Campo, the manufacturing hub in Sao Paulo state where he was a union leader, da Silva recalled that four years ago he was imprisoned and unable to vote.

Bolsonaro grew up in a lower-middle-class family before joining the army. He turned to politics after being forced out of the military for openly pushing to raise servicemen’s pay. He was a fringe lawmaker in Congress, frequently expressing his admiration for the country’s two-decade military dictatorship.

Traditionally, the armed forces have limited their involvement in elections to carrying machines to isolated communities and patrolling violent regions. But this year, Bolsonaro suggested the military should conduct a parallel count of the ballots.

The Defense Ministry said it would cross check the results of over 400 polling stations in Brazil. After the ballot is closed, any citizen or entity can go to each station and check the tally at the polls.

Sunday’s voting was largely peaceful after a contentious, sometimes violent campaign in which Brazil’s democracy seemed to hang in the balance. As the election neared, Bolson jaguar repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the election and his opinion poll numbers flagged.

Julia Sottili, a museum worker, said she voted for da Silva because of what she described as Bolsonolfo’s authoritarian tendencies. Lula wants to improve people’s lives. He is really concerned about human rights.”

The polls showed da Silva was in a good spot to win the presidency in the first round, securing at least half of the votes. Brazil is facing four more weeks of intense campaigning after he came short.

However, after leaving office he became ensnared in a wide-ranging corruption scandal that landed him in prison for a year and a half. His political career appeared to be over. He was let go on a technicality and immediately began his candidacy for president of the United States for a sixth time.

By contrast, Bolsonaro’s second-place finish on Sunday was a sobering result for the president whose erratic behavior and policy decisions cost him support.

All this provided an opening for da Silva, who is now 76 and a survivor of throat cancer. He promised a return to the good times of his first two terms, and he was the man who could save Brazil’s democracy if he beat Bolsonaro.

One day after the winning candidate of Brazil’s upcoming presidential election was declared, the incumbent has yet to publicly acknowledge his loss.

“Anywhere else in the world, the president who lost would have called me by now and conceded,” Lula da Silva told supporters on Sunday night, explaining that he was “part happy, part worried” about the transfer of power.

The Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court President Alexandre de Moraes and the Brazilian Prime Minister Lula da Silva and Ms Lula Bolsonaro

It is Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court that officially validates election results and communicates them to the Senate, Chamber of Deputies and State Assemblies.

Electoral Court President Alexandre de Moraes on Sunday personally called both Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro to inform them of the results and congratulate them on their participation in the democratic process, according to a press release by the Court.

De Moraes also said he did not see much room for the election to be contested. The results have been accepted and those who were elected will take office on January 1.

The president of the Brazilian Senate and another member of the lower house have publicly supported the da Silvas.

And Russian President Vladimir Putin sent congratulations in a message reported by Russian state news agency TASS, adding: “The vote’s results confirm your high political authority.”

The President-elect has begun his diplomatic work with a meeting on Monday with the Argentine President, one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate him.

The army marshall did not attend the inauguration of Prudente de Moraes because he wasn’t in favor of the new republic.

And almost a century later, the last of the unelected military presidents, João Batista Figueiredo, snubbed the inauguration of his successor José Sarney.

The boycott was symbolic in both cases. Augusto de Arruda Botelho, an expert on legal matters, said that if Bolsonaro would refuse to concede the presidency in a public statement it would be the same.

At the end of the day, the Electoral Court will have power over the winner of the election, so acknowledging the result is a non-starter, he said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/americas/brazil-election-result-explainer-intl-latam/index.html

Pro-Bolsonaro Demonstration at the So Paulo International Airport: Delays and Disruption

In at least 19 states across the country, pro-Bolsonaro truck drivers and other supporters are blocking roads and highways, causing major delays and disruption.

A CNN crew said access to São Paulo International Airport had been disrupted with close to 100 protesters blocking a highway leading up to the airport. Some people walked along the side of the road to get to the airport, the crew said. Very few cars had pulled up outside terminal 3 at the airport, suggesting that most cars had been caught in the blockade.

Police officers trying to avoid confrontation with protesters on the road leading to the airport told CNN they were afraid of upsetting them.

In the first public comments by any member of Bolsonaro’s inner circle since his election defeat, Bolsonaro’s son, Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, took to Twitter on Monday afternoon to thank his father’s supporters, and urged them not to “give up.”

The CNT said the protests should be categorized as anti-democratic and potentially violations of the democratic rule of law because of theirconvenience and damage to the whole society.