Election highlights turmoil
Right-wing Bolsonaro heads to runoff
Brazilians are choosing their leaders in an election marked by intense anger at the ruling class.
SAO PAULO — A farright former army captain who expresses nostalgia for Brazil’s military dictatorship won its presidential election by a surprisingly large margin Sunday but fell just short of getting enough votes to avoid a second-round runoff against a leftist rival, rallying voters to his promises to rid Latin America’s largest nation of rampant corruption, crime and moral rot.
Jair Bolsonaro, whose last-minute surge almost gave him an electoral stunner, had 46.7 percent compared to 28.5 percent for former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal said after all the votes were counted. He needed more than 50 percent support to win outright. Haddad is the leftist standin for jailed ex-President Luiz Inacio da Silva, who was barred from running.
Polls predicted Bolsonaro would come out in front on Sunday, but he far outperformed expectations, blazing past competitors with more financing, institutional backing of parties and free air time on television.
Bolsonaro’s strong showing reflects a yearning for the past as much as a sign of the future. The candidate from the tiny Social and Liberal Party made savvy use of Twitter and Facebook to spread his message that only he could end the corruption, crime and economic malaise that has seized Brazil in recent years — and bring back the good ol’ days and traditional values.
“I voted against thievery and corruption,” said Mariana Prado, a 54-year-old human resources expert. “I know that everyone promises to end these two things, but I feel Bolsonaro is the only one can help end my anxieties.”
Bolsonaro has painted a nation in collapse, where drug traffickers and politicians steal with equal impunity, and moral rot has set in. He has advocated loosening gun ownership laws so individuals can fight off criminals, giving police a freer hand to use force and restoring “traditional” Brazilian values — though some take issue with his definition of those values in light of his approving allusions to dictatorship-era torturers and his derisive comments about women, blacks and gay people.
He capitalized on Brazilians’ deep anger with their traditional political class and “throw the bums out” rage after a massive corruption investigation revealed staggering levels of graft.
Beginning in 2014, prosecutors alleged that Brazil’s government was run like a cartel for years, with billions of dollars in public contracts handed out in exchange for kickbacks and bribes.
Revelations of suitcases of cash, leaked recordings of incriminating exchanges between powerbrokers and the jailing of some of the of the country’s most powerful people, including da Silva, unfolded like a Hollywood script — and then became one: Netflix released a (barely) fictionalized account of the probe this year.
The Workers’ Party was at the center of that investigation, and it has struggled to stage a comeback with Haddad, who has portrayed a country hijacked by an elite that will protect its privileges at all costs and can’t bear to see the lives of poor and working class Brazilians improve.
Haddad has promised to roll back President Michel Temer’s economic reforms that he says eroded workers’ rights, increase investment in social programs and bring back the boom years Brazil experienced under his mentor, da Silva.