Rio de Janeiro: Soldiers stand guard as people queue to cast their votes at a polling centre.—AFP
Rio de Janeiro: Soldiers stand guard as people queue to cast their votes at a polling centre.—AFP

BRASILIA: Brazilians began voting on Sunday in the most polarised election in decades as anger over corruption and crime were expected to carry Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency, marking a dramatic swing to the right in the world’s fourth-largest democracy.

Bolsonaro’s sudden rise was propelled by rejection of the leftist Workers Party (PT) that ran Brazil for 13 of the last 15 years and was ousted two years ago in the midst of the country’s worst recession and biggest-ever political graft scandal.

His leftist rival Fernando Haddad, standing in for the jailed PT founder and former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been trailing Bolsonaro since the first-round vote three weeks ago.

“I want to take the PT out,” said Celina Ceccon, who previously supported Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff but voted for Bolsonaro in this election “There was a lot of corruption, bad things, so much stealing. There’s got to be a change,” said the 74-year-old resident of the capital Brasilia.

The last round of opinion surveys on Saturday showed Haddad narrowing a wide polling gap. Endorsements from leading legal figures in Brazil’s unprecedented fight against political corruption also raised hopes among Haddad’s supporters that he can pull off what would be a stunning upset win.

Haddad has reduced Bolsonaro’s lead from 12 to 8 percentage points in five days, according to the Ibope polling firm that gave him 46 per cent of voter support compared with Bolsonaro’s 54 per cent. A Datafolha poll also released late Saturday showed Bolsonaro had 55 per cent and Haddad 45 per cent.

Haddad told reporters in Sao Paulo early Sunday that the opinion polls represent an important swing in momentum in his favour.

“I am confident that we will have a big result today,” he said. “Let’s fight until the last minute.

Polling stations opened at 8am (1100 GMT) and the last closed in far western Brazil at 7pm Brasilia time.

While Haddad has gained traction in the polls, he failed to win the key endorsement of centre-left former candidate Ciro Gomes, a former governor of Cear state in the northeast, which would have given him a big lift in Brazil’s poorest region.

Many Brazilians are concerned that Bolsonaro, an admirer of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship and a defender of its use of torture on leftist opponents, will trample on human rights, curtail civil liberties and muzzle freedom of speech.

The 63-year-old seven-term congressman has vowed to crack down on crime in Brazil’s cities and farm belt by granting police more autonomy to shoot at armed criminals. He also wants to let more Brazilians buy weapons to fight crime — a major demand by one of his biggest backers, the powerful farm lobby.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2018

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