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The chances of Brazil's leftist presidential candidate Fernando Haddad narrowing the lead of right-wing front-runner Jair Bolsonaro took a hit when he failed to win a crucial endorsement on Saturday, a day before the two face off in a runoff election.
However, polls published late Saturday from Brazil's two biggest surveying firms showed momentum shifting toward Haddad, though he still trails Bolsonaro by a solid margin.
Ciro Gomes said in a video on social media that he would not take sides in the election campaign, withholding support for Haddad of the Workers Party (PT).
Gomes, a governor of Ceará state in the northeast, is influential in Brazil's poorest region. His endorsement could have given a big lift in the South American country's most polarized election in a generation.
But Rodrigo Janot, Brazil's influential prosecutor general under the watch of the country's unprecedented investigations and prosecutions of endemic political grafted place, tweeted late Saturday that he would vote for Haddad. That was a blow to Bolsonaro's work positioning himself as the only anti-corruption candidate.
"I think we are at the brink of a process that could push our democracy beyond its limits," Janot told Reuters late Saturday. "Freedom, equality and fraternity – always and at any cost."
Momentum in polls
Haddad narrowed Bolsonaro's lead to eight percentage points in an Ibope poll released late Saturday, a survey that gave him 46 percent compared with Bolsonaro's 54 percent.
As only two candidates remain in their votes, they will cancel their votes, which will be taken into account.
In a Datafolha poll released Saturday, Bolsonaro had 55 percent of vote backing, compared with 45 percent for Haddad.
While Haddad failed to get Gomes to endorse him, he won the backing on Janot but of Brazil's most popular YouTube host, Felipe Neto, who has 27.7 million followers on his channel. A popular anti-corruption judge, Joaquim Barbosa, who jailed several top PT leaders for corruption, also came out for Haddad.
Gomes finished third in the Oct 7 first round vote with 12 percent of the vote, behind Bolsonaro's 46 percent and Haddad's 29 percent. The leader of the peasants, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption and anointed Haddad as his stand-in.
Bolsonaro, to train Army captain, is poised to become Brazil's first far-right president since the end of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. The 63-year-old seven-term congressman has been promised to crack down on crime and corruption, pitching himself as the anti-establishment candidate for the political party.
Bolsonaro's fast-rising scandal after the leftist recession and embroiled in its worst corruption scandal after the leftist PT ran the government for 13 of the last 15 years.
Until his presidential run, Bolsonaro was best known for defending the military regime and its use of torture. He has faced charges for misogynist, racist and homophobic rants.
The Supreme Court has rejected the racism charge, but it has not been dealt with in this case. He called the case political persecution.
'Sweetening' Bolsonaro
A week ago, Bolsonaro went to the top of the "red" leftists out of Brazil or put them in jail, harsh words that probably contributed to the narrowing of his lead.
YouTuber Neto said he had been neutral until that point. "Everything changed when (Bolsonaro) said he would sweep his opponents out of the country or into jail. In 16 years of PT I have been robbed, but never threatened, "Neto said by Twitter.
In the final two days of campaigning, President Donald Trump's example and pull Brazil out of the Paris climate change agreement.
On Friday he told Xingú tribespeople they had a right to charge royalties for mining and hydroelectric power generation on their reservations, a solution for some of the Amazon's rainforest and its biodiversity .
"You are as good as any of us," he said in a video posted on social media. "I want you to have the right to use your rich and wealthy mineral and mineral wealth."
In his final hours of campaigning in Sao Paulo, Haddad accused the Bolsonaro camp of "sweetening" their candidate to make him appear what he is not. "He is a truculent and dangerous person, and that's how he should be presented to the nation," he said.
– Reuters
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