by Anthony Boadle
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilians were voting in droves on Sunday for the first round of the most polarized presidential election in decades, in which left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is favored ahead of far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
Most polls have given “Lula” a clear lead in recent months, but Jair Bolsonaro has hinted that he may refuse to concede defeat, raising fears of an institutional crisis or even violence.
Lula, who previously served as head of state between 2003 and 2019, has been given 10 to 15 percentage points ahead of his main opponent by several recent opinion polls. He can be elected in the first round if he receives more than 50% of the votes deemed valid, which several institutes consider possible.
Lula was in prison during the previous presidential election in 2018 since he was then serving a conviction for corruption, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Sunday, in his polling station in São Bernardo do Campo, he evoked this reversal of fortune by denouncing a condemnation motivated by political reasons.
“It’s an important day for me,” he said. “Four years ago I couldn’t vote because I was the victim of a lie…I want to try to help my country get back to normal.”
Jair Bolsonaro voted in Rio de Janeiro and said he expected to win the election in the first round. The ex-officer repeatedly claimed during the campaign that he did not believe the polls, saying their findings did not match the support he witnessed at his rallies.
“If the elections are clean, we will win today with at least 60% of the vote,” he said in a video posted before he went to vote. “All the evidence we have is in our favour. The other side hasn’t been able to win on the streets, they haven’t campaigned, they have no membership, no credibility.”
Polling stations will close at 5:00 p.m. Brasilia time (20:00 GMT) and the results may not be announced until several hours later.
SOCIAL PROTECTION AND ENVIRONMENT AT THE HEART OF ISSUES
If no candidate is elected in the first round, the first two will qualify for a second round on October 30.
Bolsonaro has threatened to contest the presidential result and made accusations of fraud without any supporting evidence; he blamed the election authorities for plotting against him and suggested that the army should organize a parallel vote, which it refused to do.
Some critics of the incumbent president say that in the event of a runoff, campaign tension could foster unrest comparable to the January 2021 assault on Washington’s Capitol by supporters of defeated US President Donald Trump at the ballot box a few weeks earlier by Joe Biden.
Jair Bolsonaro assured that he would respect the result of the election if it was “clean and transparent”, without specifying by what criteria he would judge it.
Brazilian voters must also designate this Sunday the 513 members of the lower house of Congress, a third of the 81 senators, as well as the governors and the parliamentarians of the States.
If Lula is the favorite for the presidential election, the conservative coalition which supports Jair Bolsonaro should retain a majority in both chambers of Congress, which would complicate the task of a left-wing government.
Among the main issues in the ballot are the risk of famine in certain regions, rising unemployment and the difficulties of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the management of which by the Bolsonaro administration has been widely criticized.
Both the incumbent president and Lula have promised to increase social spending next year.
The left-wing candidate also pledged to launch a new environmental protection policy as the Bolsonaro presidency was marked by an acceleration in deforestation in the Amazon, now at its highest for 15 years.
As in every election, the army is mobilized to provide security in some 477,000 polling stations. The national electoral authority, the TSE, has also invited an unprecedented number of foreign observers after being criticized by Jair Bolsonaro.
(Report Anthony Boadle, French version Marc Angrand)