“We are calm (…) in the first round, the elections are decided today,” Bolsonaro said in brief remarks to journalists as he left the polling station. Meanwhile, Lula da Silva, the big favorite in the polls, pointed out that “the country needs to recover the right to be happy” and “we want a country that lives in peace, with hope and that believes in the future.”
The main candidates in the Brazilian elections, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the current president Jair Bolsonaro, voted during the morning of this Sunday. While the first assured that with the vote he wants Brazilians to recover the “right to be happy”, the second insisted that he will sweep the day and that he will win the elections in the first round.
Bolsonaro went to vote at a polling station in the Military Village of Rio de Janeiro, dressed in a yellow sports shirt with a green collar and the national flag emblazoned on the chest, and apparently wearing a bulletproof vest underneath.
“We are calm (…) in the first round, the elections are decided today”, Bolsonaro said in brief statements to journalists as he left the electoral college.
Meanwhile, Lula da Silva, the great favorite in the polls, voted this Sunday in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a city in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo where he began his political career, and He stated that the country needs to “recover the right to be happy.”
“We want a country that lives in peace, with hope and that believes in the future,” Lula told reporters following voting at a public school in that town, where he arrived thirteen minutes following the polling stations opened in the country. .
Las latest voting intention polls, released on Saturday, place Bolsonaro fourteen points away from the favorite candidateformer president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who might win in the first round.
Lula said that they are the “most important” elections for him, who governed for two terms, between 2003 and 2010, following having lost the elections in 1989, 1994 and 1998.
“In 2018 I might not vote because I was in prison, the victim of a lie, and four years later I am voting with recognition of my total freedom and the possibility of becoming president of this country once more and returning to normal,” he added. Lula, who remained in jail for 580 days for two corruption convictions, later annulled by the Supreme Court.
In his statement to journalists, Lula criticized the management during the pandemic of the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is seeking re-election.
Lula voted accompanied by his wife, Rosângela da Silva, known as “Janja”, and some members of the progressive Workers’ Party (PT).
Tense and polarized day
In the event that none of the candidates reaches more than half of the valid votes, the two most voted will have to face each other in a second round scheduled for October 30.
On this day, which began at 08:00 local time (same time in Chile) and will close at 17:00, some 156.4 million voters are called to elect the president, the 27 governors, the 513 deputies, to a third of the Senate and to renew the representatives in the regional legislative assemblies.
This year’s elections, the most polarized since Brazil regained democracy in 1985, have been characterized by a climate of tension between Lula and Bolsonaro, a dispute that spread to his followers, with some cases of attacks and deaths motivated by arguments. policies.
