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Poll-topping Brazil far-right candidate to enter race
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 22, 2018 (AFP) – Controversial extreme-right candidate
Jair Bolsonaro is expected to formalize his candidacy on Sunday for Brazil’s
October presidential elections, boosted by strong social media support and
polls that show him headed to a second round.
Less than three months from a race whose outcome is uncertain, the former
army officer who professes nostalgia for the country’s military dictatorship,
is firmly rejected by part of the population sickened by his racist,
misogynistic and homophobic insults.
Others see him as a savior of the country undermined by repeated
corruption scandals.
Bolsonaro, 63, on Sunday plans to rally supporters in his Rio de Janeiro
stronghold and is expected to officially become the Social Liberal Party
(PSL) candidate.
He rejoined PSL in March after many switches during his political career.
“I have people who support me throughout Brazil. Some of them even like
me,” he said Thursday in Goiania city, where he reiterated his promise to
loosen Brazil’s tight gun ownership restrictions to allow self-defense.
As he often does, he triggered controversy, this time by provoking a young
girl to make the shape of a gun with her fingers.
A late June poll placed Bolsonaro on top with 17 percent of intended votes
in the first round, in the absence of former leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, who has been in prison on a corruption conviction since April and
whose candidacy will likely be blocked.
Black ecologist Marina Silva polled second place at 13 percent, in a field
where Brazil’s more than 30 parties have until mid-August to name candidates.
Pollsters do not see Bolsonaro winning a second round.
Fans know him as “the myth,” and part of his appeal lies simply in the
fact that he is one of the country’s rare well-known political figures not to
be tainted by corruption accusations.
But with his provocative style, several of his vice-presidential picks
have rejected him.
The latest was Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, former head of a United
Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, whose party refused to align with the
PSL.
Now, Bolsonaro could go with Janaina Paschoal, who was a lead lawyer for
the case to strip Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff of the presidency in 2016.
“I have the feeling that she feels like helping to transform Brazil. We
are trying to woo her by telephone,” he told O Globo newspaper on Friday.
Without allying with a big party, the veteran Congressman would only have
eight seconds of air time for his television campaign ads, which are allotted
according to a coalition’s strength in parliament.
It’s something to feed his strategy of rejecting traditional media, which
Bolsonaro accuses of spreading false information, and to bet more on social
media including his Facebook account with more than five million followers.
BSS/AFP/RY/1902 hrs