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SAO PAULO – Brazilians choose their leaders Sunday in an election marked by intense anger against the ruling class after years of political and economic turmoil, including what could be the biggest corruption scandal in the history of Latin America.
Many people thought that the rage of the "nudge" would allow the chances of an outsider to end the hegemony of the Center-left Workers Party and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party of center-right, who have been fighting for years for the presidency.
As in many elections, the results did not go as planned. The man who has most benefited from the anger is a 27-year-old Congress veteran – Jair Bolsonaro – whose alien status is based largely on far right positions that have alienated everyone what they have attracted – the nostalgia for a military dictatorship, insults against women and homosexuals and calls for fighting crime by easing controls on already deadly police forces .
The former mayor of Sao Paulo, Fernando Haddad, of the Workers Party, who won the last four presidential elections, is in second place.
Bolsonaro garnered 36% of the vote in the latest Datafolha poll, followed by 14 points by Haddad. The survey polled 19,552 people on Friday and Saturday and has an error margin of 2 percentage points. If no one gets a majority on Sunday, a second round will take place on October 28th.
"In general, these are the weirdest elections I've ever seen," said Monica de Bolle, director of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "It sounds like a competition between the two weakest candidates possible."
The campaign to manage the largest economy in Latin America, which is a major trading partner of the countries of the region and a diplomatic heavyweight, has been unpredictable and tense. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led the first polls by far, but was banned from standing for re-election for corruption. Bolsonaro was stabbed at a rally in early September and has been campaigning in a hospital bed in recent weeks. And since forever, Brazilians have said that their confidence in their leaders and their hopes for the future are diminishing.
This election was once seen as the great hope of ending a period of turbulence during which many politicians and corporate executives were convicted of corruption, a president was dismissed and dismissed during controversial proceedings and the economy has experienced a prolonged recession.
Instead, the two leaders only reflect the enraged divisions that have opened up in Brazilian politics following the dismissal of Dilma Rousseff and the revelations of the "Car Wash" transplant probe.
Bolsonaro, whose base is rather that of the middle class, painted a country in ruins, where drug traffickers and politicians steal with equal impunity and where a moral decay has taken place. He argued for a relaxation of the laws on the possession of firearms the police more freely use force and the restoration of the "traditional" Brazilian values - even if some dispute his definition in the light of his approving allusions to the past military dictatorship and derisory comments on women, blacks, and gays.
"We are keen for change," said Andre Portela, professor of economics at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a leading university and think tank. "Bolsonaro was able to channel that and present himself as a carrier of change, although it would not be clear if he really would."
Haddad and the Workers Party, meanwhile, have portrayed a country hijacked by an elite that will protect its privileges at any cost and can not stand to see the lives of poor Brazilians and workers improve.
Haddad promised to roll back President Michel Temer's economic reforms, which he said eroded workers' rights, increased investment in social programs and brought back the boom years of booming Brazil. known under his mentor, da Silva.
In the middle are Brazilians who do not like the two candidates and see them as symbols of a failing system.
Perhaps nothing has more demonstrated the malfunction than the Car Wash investigation. Prosecutors have alleged that the Brazilian government has been run as a cartel for years, distributing billions of dollars in public contracts in exchange for bribes and bribes. Revelations of cash suitcases, confidential recordings of compromising exchanges between potential brokers and the imprisonment of some of the country's most powerful people unfolded as a Hollywood scenario – and then became one: Netflix has released a fictional (hardly) fictional story this year.
Still, it is not clear that voters will reject the many politicians involved in the scandal, as the electoral system strongly favors incumbents and major parties.
Elections saw a sharp rise in the number of candidates from marginalized groups, including black, indigenous and transgendered Brazilians, and some believe that anti-establishment sentiments could translate into a more representative leadership.
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Peter Prengaman, an Associated Press reporter, contributed to this report.
