Polls have opened for one of the most divisive presidential elections in Brazil’s history, with former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tipped to beat far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro.
About 156 million people are eligible to cast their ballots in these elections.
Leftist front-runner Da Silva, who is popularly known as Lula, who cast his vote on Sunday, said he is running for president “to get the country back to normal” after four years under Bolsonaro.
“We don’t want more hate, more discord. We want a country at peace,” said the 76-year-old ex-president, who is seeking a comeback after leading Brazil from 2003 to 2010. “This country needs to recover the right to be happy.”
Recent opinion polls have given Lula a commanding lead – the last Datafolha survey published Saturday found that 50 percent of respondents who intend to vote for a candidate said they would vote for Lula, against 36 percent for Bolsonaro. The polling institute interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
Al Jazeera’s Monica Yanakiew, reporting from Rio De Janeiro, said “many people are asking today if Lula will win today or whether there will be a second round on October 30th”.
Like several of its Latin American neighbours coping with high inflation and a vast number of people excluded from formal employment, Brazil is considering a shift to the political left.
Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru are among the left-leaning leaders in the region who have recently assumed power.
Candidate profile
Lula rose from poverty to the presidency and is credited with building an extensive social welfare programme during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions out of poverty.
But he is also remembered for his administration’s involvement in vast corruption scandals that entangled politicians and business executives.
Lula’s own convictions for corruption and money laundering led to 19 months imprisonment, sidelining him from the 2018 presidential race that polls indicated he had been leading against Bolsonaro.
The Supreme Court later annulled Lula’s convictions on the grounds that the judge was biased and colluded with prosecutors.
Bolsonaro, who will vote in Rio de Janeiro, grew up in a modest family before joining the army. He eventually turned to politics after being forced out of the military for openly pushing to raise servicemen’s pays.
During his seven terms as a fringe lawmaker in Congress’ lower house, he regularly expressed nostalgia for the country’s two-decade military dictatorship.
Vowing to defend “God, country and family,” the president retains the die-hard backing of his base – Evangelical Christians, security hardliners and the powerful agribusiness sector.
However, the 67-year-old has lost moderate voters with his management of the weak economy, his vitriolic attacks on Congress, the courts and the press, a surge in destruction in the Amazon rainforest, and his failure to contain the devastation of COVID-19, which has claimed more than 685,000 lives in Brazil.
Post-results scenario
There is a chance Lula could win in the first round, without need for a run-off on October 30. For that to happen, he would need more than 50 percent of valid votes, which exclude spoiled and blank ballots.
An outright win would sharpen focus on Bolsonaro’s reaction to the count given he has repeatedly questioned the reliability not just of opinion polls, but also of the electronic voting machines.
Analysts fear he has laid the groundwork to reject results.
At one point, Bolsonaro claimed to possess evidence of fraud, but never presented any, even after the electoral authority set a deadline to do so. He said as recently as September 18 that if he doesn’t win in the first round, something must be “abnormal.”
Political analyst Adriano Laureno said it is likely Bolsonaro will try to contest the result if he loses, AFP news agency reported.
“But that doesn’t mean he’ll succeed,” added Laureno, of consulting firm Prospectiva.
“The international community will recognise the result quickly … There might be some kind of turmoil and uncertainty around the transition, but there’s no risk of a democratic rupture.”
