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RIO DE JANEIRO—Brazilians began voting Sunday in a divisive presidential race expected to elect combative ex-army captain Jair Bolsonaro, shifting the country’s politics sharply to the right.
Mr. Bolsonaro, a champion of Brazil’s 1964-1985 right-wing dictatorship that he once served, has been polling at nearly 60% ahead of Sunday’s runoff vote.
His rival Fernando Haddad is the stand-in candidate for former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was jailed this year for corruption. Mr. Haddad represents the leftist Workers’ Party, which ruled Latin America’s biggest country for much of the past 15 years but has been hit by corruption scandals and the country’s deepest recession on record.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters, some dressed in Brazil’s national green and yellow colors, lined up across the country to cast their votes for a candidate who has pledged to combat endemic crime and corruption and turn the nation’s official motto “order and progress”—which is emblazoned on its flag—into reality.
Mr. Haddad’s supporters are critical of Mr. Bolsonaro’s policies, which they fear would set back gay and women’s rights and give police more leeway to kill suspects.
Both sides view the other with hostility and suspicion. “I’ve never seen so much anger before,” said Wanderlei Guedes, a clinical psychologist in Brasília for 25 years, who said his patients have increasingly come to him after falling out with friends in rancorous feuds over politics.
After surviving an assassination attempt last month, Mr. Bolsonaro has mostly campaigned from his Rio de Janeiro home, firing up supporters and taunting adversaries via social media.
Meanwhile, Mr. da Silva has continued to call the shots for the Workers’ Party from his police cell in southern Brazil, holding frequent tete-a-tetes with Mr. Haddad, who registered as his lawyer to secure regular visitation rights.
Fernando Haddad, right, represents the leftist Workers’ Party, which ruled Latin America’s biggest country for much of the past 15 years.
Photo:
fernando bizerra jr/epa-efe/rex/Shutterstock
Mr. Bolsonaro’s likely win Sunday night would also mark the rupture of a party system that was established after the end of military rule in the mid 1980s, mirroring both the rise of anti-establishment politics and populist nationalism across the world.
Running for the previously little-known conservative PSL Party, Mr. Bolsonaro would be the first presidential winner since 1989 who isn’t from the Workers’ Party or Brazil’s centrist PSDB Party.
The paratrooper-turned-congressman has stunned pundits and rivals over recent months, luring voters across class and social divides, and winning over scores of Mr. da Silva’s former supporters.
His pledge to give police carte-blanche to kill suspected criminals and arm civilians for self-defense has found support in a country with nearly 64,000 murders last year.
“I’m afraid to go out at night when it gets dark,” said Raquel Nunes, 27 years old, a secretary from São Paulo and an avid Mr. Bolsonaro supporter. “But he’s going to solve this, he’s going to be firm, talking didn’t get us anywhere so we need to respond with force.”
A champion of traditional family values, Mr. Bolsonaro has gained support among evangelical Christians—now a third of Brazil’s population, while his plan to open up the economy and cut public debt by 20% has won him equally loyal disciples in the financial markets.
But his comments advocating beating children to stop them from “turning gay” and arguing that women deserve lower salaries than men, has appalled swaths of the electorate. That includes many of his own supporters who say they are backing the military man as the only available alternative to the Workers’ Party.
Edipo Sampaio, 25, an IT worker from São Paulo, said several people turned on him after he pledged his support to Mr. Bolsonaro on Facebook, including an old childhood friend who is gay. “He just kept saying that if I vote for Bolsonaro I must be anti-gay. I’m not anti-gay!”
Mr. Bolsonaro’s opponents fear his plans to ease environmental controls to boost mining and agricultural activities would have a devastating impact on the Amazon rainforest. They also point to his public defense of torture and his choice of army generals for key government posts as a threat to democracy.
“Bolsonaro talks about imposing order in a way that would be at the expense of much of the social progress the country has made,” said João DeMarco, 21, who says he is backing Mr. Haddad as the only alternative left to Mr. Bolsonaro.
A soft-spoken university professor, Mr. Haddad has promised to reduce Brazil’s deep income inequality, proposing the expansion of social welfare programs and income tax exemption for the poor. That would be a challenge given that Brazil’s debt load as a percentage of its economy stands at a hefty 88% and growing, according to IMF calculations—a level that economists say is unsustainable.
Many Brazilians, however, are resolute about never again voting for the Workers’ Party, which ruled Brazil from 2003 to 2016. They fear Mr. da Silva’s imprisonment may have also radicalized the leftist party, pointing to their continued support of Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime in neighboring Venezuela.
Brazil could end up like Venezuela under the Workers’ Party, said Gabriela Iwata, a 20-year-old student, fearing empty supermarket shelves and hospitals short of medicine. “They’re not capable of controlling the country..it would become a zombie apocalypse.”
—Jeffrey T. Lewis contributed to this article.
Write to Samantha Pearson at [email protected] and Luciana Magalhaes at [email protected]
