Presidential election in Brazil | Lula and Bolsonaro accuse each other of lying during the first televised debate

(Sao Paulo) The two candidates for the Brazilian presidential election, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, went blow for blow on Sunday, accusing each other of lying during their first televised face-to-face, two weeks of the second round.

“Lula, stop lying, a man of your age! “Launched the far-right president, 67, during the first minutes of this debate on the Bandeirantes channel.

“You are the king of false information, the king of stupidity,” retorted former left-wing head of state Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010).

Lula, 76, spent much of his speaking time at the start of the debate castigating his opponent’s “negligence” during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 680,000 lives in Brazil.

Jair Bolsonaro for his part accused the former steelworker of “not having the slightest concern for the poorest”, congratulating himself on having approved exceptional expenses amounting to 600 reais (about 131 Canadian dollars) the allowances paid to families. the most humble.

Lula obtained 48.3% of the vote in the first round on October 2, against 43.2% for the far-right president.

The electoral campaign was marked by virulent attacks between the candidates and their entourages, who did not hesitate to launch accusations of cannibalism, pedophilia or links with organized crime.

Prohibited videos

Jair Bolsonaro was castigated on Saturday by the left-wing opposition for recounting having entered a house inhabited by young Venezuelan women, minors, in 2021, suggesting that they were prostitutes.

“I parked my motorbike on a corner, took off my helmet and started looking at the girls, three or four, pretty, 14, 15, dressed as one can be on a Saturday in a neighborhood. An atmosphere was created, I came back, “can I come into your house?”, I came in,” he said.

Mr. Bolsonaro has repeatedly claimed that Brazil would meet the same fate as Venezuela if its rival wins.

Faced with the deluge of criticism aroused by these statements – the president of the PT (Workers’ Party, left, from which Lula comes) Gleisi Hoffmann described Mr. Bolsonaro as “depraved” – the Brazilian president assured to have “always fought pedophilia” and said he entered the house with “ten other people” and in front of CNN cameras.

Arriving at the studio for the debate, the far-right president said the past 24 hours had been “the most terrible” of his life due to the accusations.

The president of the Superior Electoral Tribunal, Alexandre de Moraes, ordered on Sunday that videos associating Jair Bolsonaro with pedophilia be removed from the main social media platforms, the remarks of the president being, according to him, “taken out of context”.

Lula would win the second round of the presidential election, which will take place on October 30, with 53% of the votes cast against 47% for Jair Bolsonaro, according to a Datafolha poll published on Friday

The second round promises to be hotly contested in this extremely polarized election and the two candidates have striven to rally political support and try to convince the undecided by pursuing an intense campaign throughout Brazil.

The various polling institutes have been widely criticized for not having anticipated the high score of the incumbent president, to which they attributed a maximum of 37%, on 1^er round.