“It’s unacceptable,” Paes declared, wiping away a tear as he pondered whether his father might still be alive had Bolsonaro bought vaccines more quickly. “Vote for whoever you want, so long as you vote Lula.”Īddressing thousands of supporters in the packed samba school, Paes recalled how his father died on a ventilator during a Covid outbreak that Bolsonaro catastrophically mishandled, claiming more than 685,000 lives. “He’s the figure who embodies the hope of our people,” said Paes. Many people are afraid,” Oliveira said of a toxic campaign that has seen a succession of politically motivated attacks and murders.ĭesperate for a round one win, Lula’s campaign is battling to secure support from beyond the left, and convince supporters of the third- and fourth-placed stragglers to vote tactically for the Workers’ party frontrunner.Īt Sunday’s samba-themed shindig, Lula was flanked by Rio’s centre-right mayor, Eduardo Paes, who urged spectators to back a man he called Brazil’s greatest living politician. If there are outbreaks of violence it could have an impact too. “There’s the question of turnout, which is hard to predict. “My sense is that if the election was held today, it’d be over in the first round,” said Flávia Oliveira, a political commentator for the television channel GloboNews, although she warned multiple factors were at play. Most polls suggest the veteran leftist, a former factory worker who first ran for president in 1989, is tantalisingly close to securing the overall majority of votes needed to avoid a run-off against Bolsonaro in late October.

Samba de jenerio