Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro burn their last cartridges this Saturday in Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, before measuring their forces on Sunday in the first round of the presidential elections.
Bolsonaro, 67, wearing a black jacket and without a helmet, led a motorcycle caravan to Ibirapuera Park, the green lung of Sao Paulo, for a rally in front of supporters. Along the road, Brazilians wearing yellow and green shirts and waving their country’s flags applauded and asked for selfies with the president.
About 5 km away, voters of the former president Lula76 years old and at the forefront of the polls, began to congregate on the emblematic Paulista avenue, scene of the great demonstrations in the megalopolis, for a “victory march” on the last day of the campaign.
“Brazil, urgent, Lula president!” and “Jair, time to leave!” shouted the first demonstrators who gathered at the event of the left-wing candidate, who is betting on winning the presidency in the first round.
“Nobody can take this misrule of Bolsonaro anymore,” Anderson Momesso, 52, told AFP. “Bolsonaro ruined everything, it’s time for Lula to come back so we can try to salvage these eight years and send Brazil back to the front.”
Security
The far-right president has toured several cities in the country on two wheels with his followers, including in Guaranhuns, in Pernambuco (northeast), where Lula grew up before moving with his family to Sao Paulo to escape poverty.
His campaign team hopes that this noisy demonstration will give one last boost to the former Army captain, who will later leave for Santa Catarina, in the southeast, for a last act that will end a month and a half of campaigning.
The electoral race had an increase in security this year, four years after Bolsonaro was stabbed in the middle of the street before the 2018 elections.
Radio and television announcements are prohibited from Thursday, but in-person events and the distribution of election material will be allowed until Saturday night.
Tense last few hours
On Saturday, at the end of the afternoon, the publication of the latest survey by the Datafolha Institute is also expected, a reference in Brazil.
That pollster placed Lula in front on Thursday with a wide advantage of 14 points over Bolsonaro, 48% to 34%.
To obtain a third term from Sunday, the former president (2003-2010) must gather at least 50% of the valid votes (without nulls or blanks).
In Thursday’s poll, Lula appeared with precisely 50% of those votes. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points, which creates uncertainty about the possibility of a ballot, scheduled for October 30.
Confident of a first-round victory, his Workers’ Party was allowed to gather supporters at La Paulista on Sunday night to celebrate.
The last hours of the campaign “will be very tense, everyone will observe the smallest details that could move the needle to one side or the other,” Jairo Nicolau, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, tells AFP.
Fears after the result
That tension was palpable on Thursday, in the last television debate on the TV Globo network, the most watched in the country.
Lula and Bolsonaro exchanged harsh personal attacks, accusing each other of being liars and corrupt.
Lula assured on Friday that he fears that the transfer of power will be “tumultuous” in the event of his victory, with 63 days until the investiture, on January 1.
Last week, the head of state, who has repeatedly questioned the electronic ballot box system in Brazil without evidence, stated that it would be “abnormal” if he did not obtain at least 60% of the votes in the first round.
“Let’s all vote in peace, security and harmony,” the president of electoral justice, Alexandre de Moraes, the target of constant attacks by the president, wrote in a tweet.
Brazil’s 156 million voters will also elect the lower house of congress, a third of the senate, and the governors and legislative assemblies of the 27 states on Sunday.
The electoral centers open at 8 in the morning and close at 5 in the local afternoon, and the results are expected on the same day.
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