Brazil’s far-Right strongman Bolsonaro brushes off protests to take pole position in race to be president
UNTIL 2006, every time the tide rose in the Brazilian shanty town of Brasilia Teimosa, it brought destruction. Poor families forced to live in wooden shacks on stilts overlooking the waterfront lived in fear that the water might take everything they owned, including their homes.
In his first domestic visit as president in 2003 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stood on a makeshift stage in the slum and promised things would change.
Within three years, the waterfront had been transformed into a promenade attracting tourists from around the state. Ever since, Brasilia Teimosa has been considered a bastion of support for Mr da Silva and his centre-Left Workers’ Party (PT).
But when the country goes to the polls today for the second round of its presidential election, Brasilia Teimosa, along with the rest of the north-eastern city of Recife, is expected to vote for a far-Right candidate, crushing the hold the Left has had on Brazilian politics since Mr da Silva’s election in 2002.
With a comfortable 12 point lead, the election of Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has been the subject of criminal complaints for his racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks, is all but certain.
The strength of support for Mr Bolsonaro has taken the world by surprise, but in places like Recife, the strongman is seen as the only answer to Brazil’s worst recession on record and years of punishing corruption, which saw Mr da Silva sent to jail for 12 years and which has slashed support for the PT.
“I campaigned for the Workers’ Party in the past, they used to be very well liked in the community,” says Wilson Lapa, 59, the head of the residents’ association of Brasilia Teimosa who has lived in the neighbourhood for his entire life. “But we’re tired of the corruption, the cheating, we can’t take it any more. We want to extinguish the Workers’ Party from Brazil, once and for all.” Much of Brasilia Teimosa’s ex- treme poverty was eradicated after the renovation promised by Mr da Silva, and local commerce enjoyed a boom.
But a considerable reduction in state investment, coupled with Brazil’s recession, has seen the neighbourhood slip back into desperation. Underneath the Paulo Guerra bridge, which links the district to the historic centre of Recife, new slums are being built, teetering precariously over the water below.
“The downfall of began with the election of Dilma Rousseff [Mr da Silva’s successor, in 2010]. She didn’t care about us,” says Jorge Maciel, who owns a small elec- tronics shop in the shanty town. Mr Bolsonaro’s candidacy has divided Brazil. Women’s rights groups have organised marches across the country to protest against the candidacy of a man who once told a congresswoman she was not worth raping.
Frequently compared to Donald Trump, opposition groups worry about his closeness to the army and his apparent nostalgia for Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship.
Yet none of that, nor a stabbing that forced him to halt campaigning, has done much to dent a consistent lead over his closest rival, Fernando Haddad, Mr da Silva’s would-be successor.
There is a sense among some that Mr Bolsonaro is only reflecting what many are thinking.
“He’s only controversial to a minority of the population,” says Mr Lapa.
“The things he says, he’s just voicing what most Brazilians think themselves. I don’t want to go to a restaurant and see two men kissing.” But for many, voting for Mr Bolsonaro simply means holding their noses to get rid of what they see as a spent force.
Mr Maciel, who regards Mr da Silva as a national hero, says he is “afraid of the risk Bolsonaro poses to Brazil”, but that he may still end up voting for him.
“As long as he starts acting like a politician instead of an army captain. But I won’t know until Sunday,” he says.
Given his lead in the polls, the only chance to stop a Bolsonaro presidency in today’s election is if the Workers’ Party can galvanise enough support from voters from the Left and centre of Brazilian politics.
At his final campaign event in Recife on Thursday night, Mr Haddad gathered supporters in the sweltering heat and talked of the “need to remain united” to combat the “threat” posed
‘We’re tired of corruption, the cheating, we can’t take it. We want to extinguish the Workers’ Party’
by Mr Bolsonaro.
But even here, Mr Haddad has largely failed to inspire voters and has remained something of an unknown entity throughout the campaign.
“We don’t know who he is,” says Carlos César, the owner of a local café which was forced to close during the recession.
A Bolsonaro voter, Mr César reckons the Workers’ Party candidate seems weak-willed.
“The last thing he did in politics was lose an election in the city of São Paulo. We need someone like Bolsonaro, someone with a firm attitude, to come in and fix this place.”
Mr Lapa, whose car and house are emblazoned with stickers of Mr Bolsonaro, is in no doubt about who is going to be triumphant.
“Bolsonaro’s going to win this by a landslide,” he smirks.