RIO DE JANEIRO (dpa-AFX) – In Brazil, in the presidential election at the beginning of October, there is a duel between the right-wing populist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and the left-wing ex-president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro (67) was officially named Liberal Party candidate in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Lula (76) had previously been nominated by his Labor Party PT on Thursday.
Bolsonaro only joined the Liberal Party at the end of last year in order to be able to take part in the election at all. It is the ninth party in Bolsonaro’s political career since 1988. The party nominated General and former Defense Minister Walter Souza Braga Netto as its vice-presidential candidate.
Bolsonaro and Lula are now once again preparing for a race for the presidency. In 2018, Lula was sentenced to a good 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering. He was leading in the polls at the time, but was then unable to take part in the election that Bolsonaro won. The Supreme Court overturned the verdict last year. Lula regained his political rights and went back into politics.
According to recent polls, Bolsonaro is again well behind Lula. Bolsonaro is hoping for a tailwind after Congress allowed the government to spend more on social spending in the election year. In addition, Bolsonaro has doubts about the Brazilian electoral system. In Rio, his wife Michelle gave a more than ten-minute speech to encourage women in particular to choose their husbands.
A candidate for the presidency cannot run without a party in the largest country in Latin America. Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 as a member of the right-wing Partido Social Liberal. The founding of his own party after he left in 2019 did not go beyond the phase of collecting signatures.
Parties and alliances now have until August 15 to register their candidates with the Supreme Electoral Court. From August 16, election campaigns in Brazil are officially allowed. The election will take place on October 2nd. After a suspected Bolsonaro supporter recently shot a Labor Party official, concerns about increasing violence in the election campaign have grown./mfa/DP/he