Jubilant supporters of Brazil's president-elect Jair Bolsonaro took the streets of Rio de Janeiro on Sunday after the far-right congressman was declared the winner of the country's presidential election by a wide margin.
Bolsonaro’s victory caps one of the most polarizing and violent political campaigns in Brazil’s history, amid a prolonged recession, rising crime rates and widespread corruption scandals.
Bolsonaro was declared winner by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal after 94 percent of the votes were counted, easily defeating leftist former Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad.
But while Bolsonaro’s supporters were rejoicing on Sunday, opponents voiced concerns that his victory could threaten human rights and ecological preservation in the world’s fourth largest democracy.
Speaking earlier in the day, Haddad said Brazil’s democracy was “at stake” in Sunday’s vote. “I believe today is a great day for the country which has arrived at a crossroads,” he said.
Bolsonaro won the first round of the elections in October amid a field of 13 candidates, but he fell short of the 50 percent needed to win outright and avoid a runoff against Haddad, from the Workers’ Party.
“This has been an unprecedented election,” said Marco Antonio Teixeira, a political science professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. “The rhetoric used by both candidates throughout the campaign has been extremely aggressive.”
That hostility has carried over into the streets. Dozens of politically motivated acts of violence have been registered by voters, journalist and politicians. Bolsonaro was stabbed in the stomach last month during a rally in the city of Juiz de Fora, in Minas Gerais state.
Bolsonaro, who has been compared to US President Donald Trump and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, has stirred controversy by making misogynistic, racist and homophobic remarks. He once told a congresswoman that she did not deserve to be raped because she was “very ugly,” Brazil’s TV Globo reported. He also said publicly he’d prefer to see his son “die in an accident” than a member of his family be homosexual.
In their final days on the campaign trail, both Bolsonaro and Haddad asked their supporters not to engage in violence.
For some Brazilians, voting for Bolsonaro was more about keeping the Workers’ Party (PT) out of office.
The Workers’ Party governed Brazil for more than 13 years under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, from 2003 to 2011, and his successor Dilma Rousseff, from 2011 to 2016. Lula, as he is popularly known, left office with an 83 percent approval rating, after his policies helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty. Many politicians, including Lula, were caught in a wide-ranging, 4-year anti-graft probe known as “Operation Car Wash.” He was arrested in April and given a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering.
Voting is compulsory in Brazil, but some undecided voters, like Sao Paulo resident Mauricio Soares, had chosen to vote null or blank.
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