Haddad accuses Bolsonaro of fomenting violence
‘Arming the population will resolve nothing. It’s the state that has to implement public safety,’ adds the outgoing government had fallen short in this area, especially in combating organised crime
SAO PAULO: Brazil’s farright presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is “fomenting violence” and is a danger to democracy, his leftist rival Fernando Haddad said on Saturday.
“My adversary foments violence, including a culture of rape,” Haddad said, recalling an episode when Bolsonaro told a congresswoman she didn’t “deserve” to be raped by him.
He stressed he believed Brazil was seeing the biggest peril since returning to democracy three decades ago, saying: “In my opinion, the big threat to the continent is Bolsonaro.”
In his interview with AFP in Sao Paulo, Haddad homed in on the frontrunner’s message that has resonated most with Brazilians: Bolsonaro’s law-and-order pledges that include making it easier for citizens to defend themselves with irearms, boosting the police force, and lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 16.
“Arming the population will resolve nothing. It’s the state that has to implement public safety,” he said.
He added that the outgoing government had fallen short in this area, especially in combating organsed crime.
Bolsonaro was singularly unsuited to ighting violence, Haddad said, pointing to a campaign moment when the far-right candidate feigned shooting up the Workers Party.
“How can a person preaching intolerance offer security to anyone?” he asked.
Haddad also pushed back against a public perception highlighted by Bolsonaro that the Workers Party, in power from 2003 to 2016, was corrupt -- a view conirmed by the incarceration of its icon, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for corruption.
His party had made “errors,” he admitted.
“Our government didn’t brush anything under the carpet. Obviously, what people saw outside the carpet wasn’t pretty but that was combated with legislation we approved and all organs of the state will be strengthened in our new government,” Haddad said.
“I share the same view as society that corruption is something intolerable.”
But he also pointed to Bolsonaro’s very thin record of being involved in passing laws despite nearly three decades in Congress, saying: “He rails against things. But what he proposes has no consistency whatsoever.”
Haddad declared: “That person is leader in the polls, but he will lose.”