The two main candidates for the presidency of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro and Lula, accused each other of all the ills of the country in a first face-to-face televised Sunday August 28 before the October poll.
These two rivals, central figures in the recent history of Brazil, face each other publicly for the first time. “His government was the most corrupt in the history of Brazil”launched against Lula the outgoing far-right president.
The former head of state, 76, replied by defending his government record (2003-2010) in terms of social reforms. According to him, Mr. Bolsonaro, 67, “is destroying” the country. The two candidates accused each other of lying.
In the first part of the debate, Lula focused his speech around the defense of the environment and the Amazon.
In one of the most tense moments of the exchanges, the outgoing president attacked journalist Vera Magalhaes for claiming, in a question, that he had spread false information about Covid vaccines. “Vera, you sleep thinking about me, you have some kind of crush (…), you can’t take sides in a debate like this and make false accusations against me. You are a disgrace to Brazilian journalism”, he said. Called a misogynist by another presidential candidate, Mr. Bolsonaro dismissed this accusation.
Jair Bolsonaro refuses to shake hands with Lula
Jair Bolsonaro had told journalists before this meeting that he did not see any inconvenience in facing the former left-wing president, but that he did not “will tighten[it] not the hand of a thief”in reference to the case of corruption within the public oil company Petrobras.
The ex-president was detained between April 2018 and November 2019 after being convicted of corruption. He recovered all his political rights in 2021, when the Supreme Court overturned these decisions, finding that the court which had tried him at first instance was incompetent.
Lula has, throughout the debate, argued that his innocence had been proven, but the other candidates did not hesitate on several occasions to accuse him of ” corruption “.
Lula leads the race in the polls with 47% of voting intentions, against 32% for Jair Bolsonaro, according to the Datafolha institute. Other polls give Lula a lesser lead.
In addition to the two favorites, the organizers of the debate have invited four other candidates, including former finance minister Ciro Gomes of the PDT (centre-left) and Senator Simone Tebet of the MDB (centrist), respectively third and fourth in the polls.
In 2018, the year he won the election, Mr. Bolsonaro only participated in the first two debates. A month before the first round, he was stabbed during a meeting and, after undergoing surgery, did not resume the debates.