At 21:48 local time on October 2, the Brazilian Higher Election Court announced that it had completed the count of 98.08% of the votes. Former President Lula won 48.03% of the votes, and the current President Bolsonaro won 43.54% of the votes, ranking first and second in the votes. The other nine candidates of received a total of about 8.4% of the votes. A total of more than 116 million voters participated in the voting, with an effective turnout rate of about 74.2%.
The president of the Supreme Election Court of Brazil will hold a press conference to announce that Lula and Bolsonaro have entered the second round of the election.
Lulla (left) Bolsonaro (right) Data map
According to the rules of the Brazilian presidential election, if no candidates receive more than half of the votes in the first round of voting, the two candidates with the highest votes will enter the second round of voting for the general election held on October 30, and the party with the most votes will win the election.
Associated Press analysis believes that the importance of this election is self-evident. Brazilians will decide whether the left-wing former President Lula will return to power, or whether to let the far-right President Bolsonaro continue to helm the country in the next four years.
Reuters pointed out that in multiple polls before the vote, Bolsonaro was considered to be 10 to 15 percentage points behind Lula. The current voting results not only shattered Lula's hope of winning the election in the first round, but only received a slight disadvantage in the number of votes, but also greatly boosted Bolsonaro's election situation. At the same time, the report outlook said that the second round of voting may intensify the polarization and the brewing atmosphere of political violence in Brazil.
As two giants in contemporary Brazilian politics, Bolsonaro and Lula are completely opposite. Antonio Lavareda, head of Brazil's polling agency Ipespe, described it as "these are two well-known figures, the second of the most heavyweight and unique leaders in Brazil's political circles in the past 20 years."
"Tropical Trump" Bolsonaro
67-year-old Bolsonaro is called "Tropical Trump" and is running for re-election on behalf of the conservative Liberal Party, which some US media call "a domineering nationalist."
On September 28, local time, Brazilian President Bolsonaro held an election rally. Image from The Paper Image
and Trump Before the 2020 US election, it was generally notorious that mail-in ballots would cause fraud. Bolsonaro has been sowing the seeds that supporters question the election for some time. After failing to win the first round of votes in 2018, Bolsonaro claimed election fraud existed. He himself won the second round of voting, and subsequent academic research also showed that there was no fraud in voting, but Bolsonaro used Brazil's electronic voting to question the election as a reason why there was no paper record, just as Trump was obsessed with the issue of mail-in voting.
It is reported that Brazil's electronic voting system has not been abnormal since its operation in 1996. In order to ensure fair voting, there are multiple verification measures during the election process. For example, the voting machines at the polling stations can be sampled and voting tests are conducted under the surveillance of representatives of each party.
His supporters are basically from agricultural areas, evangelical Christians, and social conservatives who advocate gun rights. During his tenure, the Amazon forest was severely damaged; the number of registered gun owners increased by more than four times; the left and right cultural wars became increasingly fierce.
During the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro fought as a political amateur who was close to the military, under the banner of anti-corruption and anti-elites. But after taking office, many of his politicians' sons were investigated for corruption, and he was accused of using presidential power to hinder the police's investigation of his family. Brazil's large-scale anti-corruption investigation, Lava Jato, also ended during his term.
During the epidemic, Bolsonaro was known for questioning the severity of the new coronavirus, the effectiveness of the vaccine and the anti-epidemic lockdown policy. It is regarded as the original murderer behind the second highest number of deaths from the new coronavirus in Brazil.During his tenure, Brazil's economy did not recover. Coupled with the blow of the epidemic, the country that supplies food for one-tenth of the world's population has caused serious food security problems, and the poor have reached a peak that has not been seen in a decade.
Former President Lula
But Bolsonaro's opponent Lula also has many controversies.
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On October 1, local time, Brazil's Labor Party candidate and former President Lula delivered a speech. The picture was from Pengpai Image
Lula's presidency from 2003 to 2010. It was a period of high prices for commodities . Brazil's economy maintained rapid growth, pushing Brazil to the sixth largest economy in the world. In addition, the government debt ratio dropped sharply, and the poverty rate and inflation rate plummeted. Its "Bolsa Familia" welfare policy that takes into account the education of children of poor families has also become a good story. Internationally, in addition to being a representative of moderate left-wing policies, he is also a representative of conservation in the deforestation of the Amazon. When he stepped down, his public support was as high as 80%.
However, his chosen successor Rousseff (Dilma Rousseff) saved the nation with the fiscal policy of " big leafy " while international commodity prices fell, causing Brazil to fall into a fiscal crisis. Rousseff himself was even impeached and stepped down in 2016. The "car wash" launched in 2014 also exposed the corruption of the Workers' Party government. Lula himself was imprisoned for one and a half years for his crimes of corruption and failed to be elected in 2018 to resist Bolsonaro. Finally, although his charges were revoked one by one due to procedural issues, improper communication between prosecutors and judges, Lula himself has always believed that he was innocent, but in the hearts of many people, Lula is still synonymous with corruption. A poll at the beginning of this year pointed out that more than half of Brazilians do not believe that the charges were revoked to prove Lula's innocence. Choose one of
, it’s difficult!
In the hearts of many Brazilians, the showdown between Bolsonaro and Lula became a choice between two bad apples. Many centrist politicians had hoped to make a "third way", but they all failed in the end. Now the number of people ranked third and fourth on the presidential candidate list has only the unit number of support.
Lula's campaign propaganda is very simple, it is to "return to the past" and constantly reiterate his achievements in the past two terms. He once said that he likes to talk about the past "because the past is much better than the present", describing that under his past leadership, Brazil's economy has been growing, putting Brazilians in a state of "collective happiness".
Indeed, under Lula's leadership, Brazil's economy grew by an average of 4.5% year-on-year. On the contrary, Brazil's economy has grown almost without growth in the past decade, and per capita income is 10% lower than its high in 2013. However, is this a big question whether this is the result of Lula's governance or luck. Back then, he was lucky to encounter an era of high commodity prices, and his successor did not have this luck. When commodity prices rose again this year, even Bolsonaro, who relied solely on populist propaganda, could bring Brazil a growth that had not been seen in the past decade (except for the rebound after the epidemic).
The fundamental problem of Brazil's economy is actually to get rid of this constraints of following the rise and fall of international commodity prices, so that Brazil can actively maintain growth. Among , many domestic problems need to be solved, including the problem of insufficient infrastructure that caused the country to de-industrialize early, the problem of low education standards, etc., and it also needs to simplify the tax system, remove institutional embezzlement, and change the current situation where most government expenses are only used for pensions and civil servant salaries.
In addition to "back to the past", Lula increased taxes to the rich in order to increase the policy direction of wealth redistribution, so that he received support from many low-class groups. He also often compares himself with the US President Biden , hoping to promote the development of infrastructure through the country like the latter. But Lula's policy lacks a strategy for how to fundamentally improve Brazil's economic structure. Bolsonaro's populist politics, which has almost no specific policy proposals, also prevents Lula from providing answers to Brazil's Dazai attempt.
Source丨CCTV News, Hong Kong 01, Observer Network
Edit丨Liu Ying, Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News Editor
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