Oct. 28 (UPI) — Brazilians will head to the polls on Sunday as the world’s fourth-largest democracy holds a critical presidential election.
Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a Christian nationalist, who has faced widespread criticism in Brazil for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his policies on deforestation in the Amazon and his attacks on the country’s electoral system, faces storied leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
On Oct. 2, Lula won 48% of the vote in the first round of the election, but fell short of the 50% needed to avoid a run-off. Most polls had Lula ahead by double digits, but Bolsonaro still managed to receive 43% of the votes. Since then, the polls have tightened, according to NPR.
However, a poll on Monday by IPEC had Lula at 50% and Bolsonaro at 43% with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Lula, a former union leader, previously led Brazil through a period of growth as president from 2003 to 2010, during which time he introduced social programs to combat poverty in the country.
However, Brazil’s Public Ministry opened a sweeping investigation into corruption allegations in 2015, and he was convicted in January 2018 of having had accepted more than $1 million in bribes from the country’s Petrobras oil company and collaborating in a money laundering scheme.
After the investigation that was widely criticized, Lula was sentenced to 12 years in prison and appealed. He was released in November 2019 when Brazil’s federal supreme court ruled that incarcerations with pending appeals were unlawful. His convictions were ultimately nullified last year.
Bolsonorao has touted his friendship with Former President Donald Trump and also said that the only way he could lose was by voter fraud. He also recently stepped up criticism on the electoral court and its justices, accusing the head justice of bias.
