Election campaign in Brazil: empty chairs and a patron saint

The big TV debate at the final stretch of the election campaign in Brazil did not take place. Instead of showing a war of words between the two rivals in the presidential election campaign, the usual telenovela was shown on Thursday evening on Brazilian TV Globo. He had already announced the evening before that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would not be going. But challenger Flávio Bolsonaro had assured that he would definitely be there, with or without Lula. It would have been a good opportunity for the senator to speak to a large audience about the latest election scandal.

According to a false report, the candidate is said to have planned to remove the Brazilian patron saint Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida from office if he wins the election. Background: Flávio Bolsonaro belongs to a Pentecostal church and this fundamentally rejects the veneration of saints. Since the Brazilian population is predominantly Catholic and inclined to veneration of saints, Bolsonaro's marketing department feared negative repercussions among voters.

However, two hours before the debate was scheduled to begin, Bolsonaro also canceled his participation. Apparently “because of censorship by the Supreme Electoral Court,” as he justified on social media. The Supreme Electoral Court had decided at short notice that an empty chair that would have been reserved for President Lula could not be shown during the TV debate, nor could the candidates present be allowed to formulate questions for those absent.

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Instead of sitting opposite each other, the two opponents then spoke independently of each other on different channels. Bolsonaro addressed his supporters in his weekly live streaming on his own TV channel on YouTube, following a tradition of his father Jair. At the same time, President Lula answered questions from the Flow podcast, one of the country's largest interview channels, which strives for diversity of interviewees and political neutrality. Bolsonaro did not mention the subject of the patron saint in his speech.

Instead, he accused the judiciary of influencing the electoral process, claimed he was prevented from taking part in the debate and accused Lula of being too cowardly for confrontation. He himself is “the only guarantee for Brazil to become a democracy again,” claimed the ultra-right politician, who has proven to have close ties to paramilitary groups in Rio de Janeiro and, as a lawyer, has already defended a police officer who shot a five-year-old child during an operation.

Lula explained that TV duels were fruitless, a mere game and criticized his political opponent, among other things, for the fact that, as a senator, he had employed relatives of the former police officer for several years who was suspected of being involved in the murder of city councilor Marielle Franco. Recalling that his government established most of the universities and public secondary schools, he called on the youth to enter politics to influence the country's reality. Finally, he called on young people and those over 70, who are exempt from general voting, to go to the polls. “You have no choice,” he addressed the audience: “Either me or barbarism.”

On Sunday, 158 million Brazilians are called to elect the president, 27 governors and two-thirds of Congress. According to a Datafolha poll published on Thursday, Lula has 45 percent of the vote, just ahead of Bolsonaro with 40 percent. If none of the presidential candidates receives more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election is scheduled for October 25.