BRASILIA (Archyde.com) – Brazilian voters go to the polls on Sunday in a presidential election, as the latest opinion polls showed leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva solidly ahead of incumbent far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and close to a clear victory.
Brazil’s most polarizing election in decades will decide whether a former president who served time in prison on corruption charges or a right-wing populist who has attacked the voting system and threatened to challenge his defeat will return to power.
Two opinion polls released in the followingnoon showed Lula with the majority of valid votes and might win the election in the first round, which would avoid a difficult run-off on October 30.
If none of the 11 candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the two candidates with the most votes will contest the second round of elections on October 30.
Lula and Bolsonaro accused each other of corruption in the last debate before the election.
President Bolsonaro described his leftist rival, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as the head of a criminal gang that ran a “government of thieves” during his two-term presidency of 2003-2010.
For his part, Lula described Bolsonaro as a “shameless” liar whose government covered up graft in the procurement of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, which claimed the lives of more than 680,000 Brazilians.
Brazil’s electronic voting system, which Bolsonaro has repeatedly criticized as vulnerable to fraud without providing evidence, allows the National Elections Authority to quickly tally results within hours following polls close at 5 p.m. (2000 GMT).
The President of the National Elections Authority, President of the Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes, called on Brazilians via Twitter to celebrate the country’s democracy by going out to vote “in peace, security, harmony, respect and freedom”.
Because of Bolsonaro’s attacks on the voting system and the potential for conflict, the National Elections Authority invited an unprecedented number of international observers to this year’s elections.
