TIG Post

Tag: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

  • Brazil court rejects Bolsonaro party complaint over vote

    Brazil‘s electoral court has rejected a challenge against the presidential election result made by the far-right party of President Jair Bolsonaro.

    He narrowly lost to the leftist former leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and his Liberal Party (PL) claimed without evidence that voting machines were compromised.

    The court said the complaint was made “in bad faith” and fined the party 22.9m reais (£3.5m; $4.3m).

    Lula takes office on 1 January.

    Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Alexandre de Moraes said the PL complaint was “offensive to democratic norms” and had sought to “encourage criminal and anti-democratic movements”.

    Lula’s victory – with 50.9% to Mr Bolsonaro’s 49.1% – has been ratified by the TSE.

    Mr Bolsonaro has previously claimed that Brazil’s electronic voting system is not fraud-proof.

    He has still not conceded defeat, but has given the go-ahead for a presidential transition. He stepped away from the public gaze after losing the election on 30 October.

    Immediately after Lula’s win was declared, many lorry drivers supporting Mr Bolsonaro erected roadblocks and there were scuffles with police. But Mr Bolsonaro later told them that blocking roads was not a part of “legitimate” protests.

    Some of his followers have continued demonstrating outside military barracks, urging a military intervention to prevent Lula taking office.

    Lula, who previously served as president from 2003 to 2010, is now 77 and will become the oldest person to assume the post.

    His victory was a stunning comeback for a politician who could not run in the last presidential election in 2018 because he was in jail and barred from public office. But his conviction for corruption was later annulled.

    Mr Bolsonaro, a former army captain, drew much support from evangelical Christians and other conservatives anxious to protect family values. But his tenure also saw accelerated deforestation of the Amazon and growing inequality.

    Source: BBC.com 

  • Bolsonaro heightened Brazil’s gun culture. Can Lula keep it under control?

    The number of privately owned guns in Brazil has nearly doubled in the last four years, to nearly 2 million.

    After winning the Brazilian election, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be re-elected President of Brazil in January, more than a decade after he last held the position. Despite his narrow victory, current President Jair Bolsonaro received more than 49 percent of the vote.

    Lula, as he is known, will now attempt to roll back many of Bolsonaro’s right-wing policies – including the loosening of Brazil’s gun-control measures, which led to the number of guns in private hands doubling since 2018. But how easy will that be?

  • Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Lula clash in the final debate before the run-off vote

    The far-right incumbent Bolsonaro and the left-wing ex-president Lula trade blows ahead of Sunday’s presidential run-off vote.

    Incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his left-wing challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva squared off in their final televised debate before the tense run-off vote on Sunday.

    According to polls, Lula is the slight favourite to run for a third term, capping a remarkable political comeback following his imprisonment on corruption convictions that were later overturned. However, Bolsonaro outperformed polls in the first round of voting earlier this month, and many analysts believe the election could go either way.

    During Friday’s free-wheeling debate, the deeply polarising figures attacked each other’s character and record, accused each other of lying and refused repeatedly to answer each other’s questions.

    “Brazilians know who the liar is,” said Lula, as the two locked horns over minimum wages and the left-wing politician’s history of corruption allegations.

    “Stop lying Lula, stop lying. It’s getting ugly,” said Bolsonaro.

    Lula, who served as president between 2003 and 2010, also highlighted that Bolsonaro’s government has not yet provided an increase to the minimum wage above inflation.

    “This man governed for four years and there was not one percent of a real increase,” Lula said at the TV Globo debate in Rio de Janeiro, which lasted two and a half hours. He said the minimum wage is now worth less than when Bolsonaro was inaugurated.

    Bolsonaro quickly promised to lift the minimum wage from $229 a month to $265 next year, though that was not included in his 2023 budget proposal sent to Congress, which the incumbent president’s allies control.

    The debate was the second head-to-head confrontation between the two men, and the grand finale of a brutal campaign marked by months of mudslinging, negative advertisements, and a flood of disinformation on social media.

    Lula leads polls

    Still, most analysts and focus groups with undecided voters suggested the president had done little to shake up a race that polls show broadly stable since Lula led the first round of voting on October 2 by five percentage points.

    That result was better for Bolsonaro than most polls had shown, giving him a boost of momentum to start the month, but the past two weeks of the campaign have presented headwinds.

    On Sunday, one of Bolsonaro’s allies opened fire on Federal Police officers coming to arrest him. A week earlier Bolsonaro had to defend himself from attack advertisements after he told an anecdote about meeting Venezuelan migrant girls in suggestive terms.

    In their first head-to-head debate this month, Lula blasted Bolsonaro’s handling of a pandemic in which nearly 700,000 Brazilians died, while Bolsonaro focused on the corruption scandals that tarnished the reputation of Lula’s Workers’ Party.

    On Friday night, both candidates returned repeatedly to Lula’s two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, when high commodity prices helped to boost the economy and combat poverty. Lula promised to revive those boom times, while Bolsonaro suggested current social programmes are more effective.