Lula would defeat Bolsonaro by 19 points difference in the second electoral round in Brazil

October 2 is getting closer and it does not seem to bring good news for the president Jair Bolsonaro. His hopes of being re-elected are crushed by the latest polls. According to Datafolha, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva he would defeat him in the second round, on October 30, by a difference of 19 points. The candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT) would obtain 57% of the votes, against 34% for the leader of the extreme right. The number of blank and invalid votes remains at 8%. The poll’s margin of error is about two points.

Bolsonaro could be defeated even in the first round because Lula currently has a 47% voting intention. He should reach 50% of the adhesions to return to the Government after 13 years that have included, along the way, different political milestones: first, the removal of his heiress, Dilma Rousseff, in 2016, by Congress, then the provisional presidency of Michel Temer, the trial against him and the subsequent prison. Lula’s arrest allowed Bolsonaro to become president. The former president regained his freedom when the process against him was annulled. He came out determined to defeat the retired captain to close what he considers the worst cycle in Republican history. Datafolha contends that if Lula’s opponent in a second round were his former minister Ciro Gomes, he would defeat him by a difference of 22 points.

the paulista newspaper Folha of São Paulo has assured that Bolsonaro’s entourage received the latest poll “with relief”. Around the president they expected even worse numbers due to rising fuel prices and a series of government scandals. The far right hopes that state aid to truckers and to the social sectors hardest hit by poverty, which has rates similar to those of the 1990s, would help the retired captain improve his position against Lula.

threats

For now, Bolsonaro has returned to rhetorical adventures. This Thursday he told his followers in Brasilia that it would be “easy to implement a dictatorship in Brazil“. In this regard, he added: “If the people fear the municipal guards with a club, imagine me with the Armed Forces with a rifle.” The head of state recognized the inconvenience of his fantasies. “I can do many things, but not I should… Today my measure may be great, but what about tomorrow?” However, he once again presented himself as the only guarantor of the country’s success. His election in 2018, he said, prevented the bankruptcy of Brazil. “If If it weren’t for me, we’d already be finished. If it hadn’t been me, we would already be in communism.”. As if he were in the farrago of the Cold War, Bolsonaro will make his anti-communism the axis of the electoral campaign that, in fact, he has already launched.

For now, the most eloquent intimidations are received by Renato Borelli, the judge who has just ordered the arrest of former Brazilian Minister of Education, Pastor Milton Ribero, for alleged corruption. Borelli has received in the last 24 hours several death threats made by “support groups” from the former official who held the educational portfolio between July 2020 and last March.

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Ribeiro, who also serves as pastor of a Presbyterian church, had to resign when a corruption network that connected his own office with other religious evangelists. At least Gilmar Santos and Arilton Moura, two pastors close to Ribeiro as well as to the president, carried out extortion maneuvers and demanded from the authorities of small cities a percentage of the money they were given for the educational area.

As expected, Bolsonaro came out in defense of the former minister. “I put my hands in the fire for him and by my other ministers. I know it from experience, almost none of them is going to commit any act of corruption”. The president’s pressure has already been felt in the investigations. The delegate of the Federal Police Bruno Calandrini has denounced “the interference in the conduct of the investigation ” linked to the Ribeiro case as well as “differentiated treatment granted” to the detained former official.