Brazil’s ugly election: ‘Lula’s Army’ storms to victory

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He’s done it again, said Vera Magalhães in The Globe (Rio de Janeiro). If anyone was capable “of pulling off an unprecedented turnaround against all odds”, it was President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who this week won a historic fourth term in office.

Brazil’s working-class hero suffered a shock defeat in the first round of the presidential election in early October, coming second to Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro (aka “the Trump of the Tropics”), who is currently under house arrest for plotting a coup.

Folha de São Paulo. He announced a number of populist measures and mobilised ten million followers via a new WhatsApp channel “Exército do Lula” (“Lula’s Army”). In the end, “the fear of a Bolsonaro returning to power” was enough to mobilise the centre-left voters who had sat out the first round: Lula won Sunday’s vote with almost 52% to 48%; his vote surged from 54 million in the first round to 64 million.

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Lula’s celebrations will be short-lived, said Míriam Leitão in The Globe. He governs a country “more divided than at any time during his previous three terms”. Bolsonaro, who is under investigation as part of a money-laundering probe, initially rejected Sunday’s result amid a row over voting hours being extended at the last minute by a supreme court judge who was previously Lula’s lawyer. He later fled to the US.

The chaos was a fitting end to one of the ugliest elections in recent yearssaid Paulo César de Oliveira in Morning Mail (Rio de Janeiro). Not since the 1964-1985 military dictatorship “has there been such a heavy, radicalised political environment”. The deep animosity between the two candidates was on full display during the televised debate held two days before the vote, said Stephen Gibbs in The Times. It “descended into a shouting match”, with Lula calling his hard-right rival “a habitual liar, a thug”. Bolsonaro, for his part, had the word “corrupt” written on his palm to serve as a reminder, as he put it, for what Lula’s Workers’ Party stood for. He would be keeping his distance from his opponent during the debate, he declared, “because my wallet could be stolen”.

Estadão (São Paulo), was the vast spending spree Lula went on after losing the first round. In the final three weeks of the contest, the PT accelerated spending on measures announced in the last year, totalling R$354 billion (£50 billion) – “institutionalised vote-buying” on a huge scale. That includes forgiving the debt of micro-entrepreneurs, and pushing through a 15% increase to the Bolsa Família programme, which provides cash to low-income households – even changing the payment schedule so people would receive the benefit days before the final vote. It makes a mockery of Brazil’s electoral law, which prohibits incumbents from granting these benefits mid-campaign.

Worse, Lula’s last-minute splurge will only aggravate Brazil’s deteriorating public finances, said The Globe. They are just one of a series of crises the president immediately faces in his fourth term. There are also the accusations of corruption against Lula’s inner circleincluding his eldest son. And the fact that he’ll be governing with a hostile parliament which, following the first round of elections, now has a distinctly conservative (and Bolsonaro-friendly) profile.

Source: theweek.com