Far-right candidate targets presidency

Controversial extreme-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro was expected to formalise his candidacy on Sunday for Brazil’s October presidential elections, boosted by strong social media support and polls that show him headed to a second round.

Controversial extreme-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro was expected to formalise his candidacy on Sunday for Brazil’s October presidential elections, boosted by strong social media support and polls that show him headed to a second round.

Less than three months from a race whose outcome is uncertain, the former army officer who professes nostalgia for the country’s military dictatorship, is firmly rejected by part of the population sickened by his racist, misogynistic and homophobic insults.

Others see him as a saviour of the country undermined by repeated corruption scandals.

Bolsonaro planned to rally supporters in his Rio de Janeiro stronghold and is expected to officially become the Social Liberal Party (PSL) candidate.

He rejoined PSL in March after many switches during his political career. “I have people who support me throughout Brazil. Some of them even like me,” he said on Thursday in Goiania city, where he reiterated his promise to loosen Brazil’s tight gun ownership restrictions to allow self-defence.

As he often does, he triggered controversy, this time by provoking a young girl to make the shape of a gun with her fingers.

A late June poll placed Bolsonaro on top with 17% of intended votes in the first round, in the absence of former leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has been in prison on a corruption conviction since April and whose candidacy will likely be blocked.

Black ecologist Marina Silva polled second place at 13%, in a field where Brazil’s more than 30 parties have until midAugust to name candidates.

Pollsters do not see Bolsonaro winning a second round.

Fans know him as “the myth” and part of his appeal lies simply in the fact that he is one of the country’s political figures not to be tainted by corruption claims.

But with his provocative style, several of his vicepresidential picks have rejected him. The latest was Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, a former head of a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti.