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What is the story and what are the issues?
The largest democracy in Latin America will go to the polls on Sunday to choose a new president, 27 governors of state, 54 senators and nearly 1,600 deputies, among what some consider the most important election in history from Brazil.
Parachutist Jair Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper admiring the pro-torture dictatorship and admiring the dictatorship, is at the center of the race to become Brazil's next commander-in-chief. It currently enjoys a 32% stake in polls.
Behind him, with about 22%, is Fernando Haddad, a 55-year-old intellectual and former mayor of São Paulo, who recently replaced former imprisoned president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as a Labor Party candidate. (PT).
While Brazil is struggling to recover from the worst recession in its history and 13 million people are out of work, Haddad promises the country's 147 million voters a return to the good old days of the economic boom. experienced Brazil under Lula from 2003 to 2011.
"We want to be happy again," Haddad told The Guardian last week. "We have learned that Brazil can develop in a way that includes people rather than excluding them. My dream is that Brazil starts to include people again. "
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has promised to "change the fate of Brazil" by blocking the return of the PT, which he describes as a corrupt clique of admiring, economically incompetent and morally bankrupt communists in Venezuela, led by Lula, incarcerated .
Bolsonaro and Haddad are followed by a trio of candidates – Ciro Gomes, Geraldo Alckmin and Marina Silva – who present themselves as reasonable centrists able to unite a deeply divided Brazil. None of them seems likely to catch up.
What are the main issues of the elections?
Two questions dominated the race to power and helped to propel Bolsonaro – a so-called political underdog that stands as the answer of Brazil to Donald Trump – on pole position: crime and corruption.
Last year, Latin America's largest economy experienced a record-breaking 63,880 homicides – a spiraling public security crisis for which Bolsonaro promised tough solutions, such as the relaxation of weapons laws. fire and the intensification of police repression. "We will hit hard in this area," he promised this week during the pre-election webcast.
While Brazil is still shocked by what some see as the biggest corruption scandal in history, Bolsonaro has also managed to portray itself as a swamp sanitizer that lives clean and is committed to purifying the world. dirty politics.
Bolsonaro also profited from widespread rage against the workers party, which dragged Brazil into an economic catastrophe under Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff. The first female Brazilian president elected in 2010, Rousseff was forced to step down in August 2016 by political opponents in a hurry to end the 13-year reign of the PT.
Bolsonaro itself has become a key electoral battlefield in recent weeks. Its right-wing supporters have had to face progressive Brazilians, appalled by the fact that a man who has repeatedly mocked blacks, women, indigenous groups and the LGBT community may soon become their leader.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Brazilian cities last week as part of an anti-Bolsonaro "not him" mobilization, echoing the 2017 women's march against Washington ahead of Donald Trump.
Is Bolsonaro really a tropical asset?
Bolsonaro admires the comparison with the commander-in-chief of the United States. "I am an admirer of Trump," he told the Guardian earlier this year. His penchant for Twitter, on which he has 1.58 million followers, and his propensity to make disconcerting but strangely captivating speeches also prompted comparisons with the President of the United States.
However, many see the radical parallel of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi or Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Like Duterte, who recently admitted that his only sin was extrajudicial killings, Bolsonaro has pledged to rain criminals to whom he blames the murder crisis in Brazil. "There are certain types of people who are not humans – they should be treated like thugs and crooks," he told reporters earlier this year.
James N Green, director of Brazil's Brown University Initiative, said he considered Bolsonaro to be both more erratic and more ideological than the US president.
"Bolsonaro is much more of a joker than Trump," he says.
"Trump built an empire on quackery and simulated it and deceived people. He did it successfully for quite a long time and so did it successfully as president. Bolsonaro's only claim is his ability to say horrible things about people, to insult people and to provoke them, "says Green.
"I do not even want to imagine what it will look like [if he wins]. "
Can we stop Bolsonaro?
Bolsonaro seems to have strengthened his lead in recent days. Some polls now give him a 10-point lead over Haddad. But the right-wing leader does not seem to be able to get the majority in the first round he needs to win the final victory on 7 October.
If it does not, a second round will take place on October 28th between the two best candidates.
Green predicted that an "anti-fascist front" against Bolsonaro could form before this historic clash, with centrists like Marina Silva and Ciro Gomes risking their full weight behind Haddad, the most likely opponent of Bolsonaro's second round. "People will not forget which side they were on."
However, this support is by no means guaranteed and some polls suggest that Bolsonaro could win a long-term duel with Haddad, having gained critical ground among the voters and in northeastern Brazil, a region traditionally loyal to the Lula PT.
survey
"Bolsonaro will have all the anti-PT votes, he's going to have all the business creation whose support will be felt in a way that's sometimes not obvious … and he's going too – and I think it's essential – to have the voices of people who are afraid to go out, "said Brian Winter, editor of Americas Quarterly." And it's really powerful in Brazil. "
Green said that he expected Haddad to triumph one day, but hesitated to make accurate predictions: "The history of Brazil is never predictable."
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