“King of lies”, “bandit”, “unbalanced”… A final televised debate opposed Lula and Jair Bolsonaro on Friday, October 28, who went blow for blow before the second round of the presidential election on Sunday. For more than two hours on TV Globo, the country’s most watched channel, the two candidates constantly accused each other of lying, to the detriment of exposures of concrete projects for the four years of mandate at stake in Sunday’s ballot.
“Lula, stop lying, go home!”, launched the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, 67, who went so far as to declare that his opponent should “to be exorcised to stop lying”. The former left-wing head of state, who celebrated his 77th birthday on Thursday, was not left out: “This guy is the biggest liar in the history of Brazil”he retorted, subsequently calling his opponent “imbalance”.
Erection problems were even invited into the debate. “Do you take Viagra?”, Bolsonaro asked Lula, who had asked him to account for the controversial purchase of 35,000 pills of this medicine for the army. Friday’s debate came on the home stretch of an often filthy campaign full of dirty tricks and massive misinformation on social media.
“It was an anti-debate, without the slightest novelty that could change the situation”, estimated the political columnist Otavio Guedes on the Globonews channel, at the end of this final televised debate before the second round. Lula has slightly increased (from four to six points) his lead in the latest poll by the benchmark institute Datafolha, published Thursday, with 53% of the voting intentions expressed, against 47% for the far-right president.
Beyond the verbal contest, the duel was also physical. Each candidate tried to best occupy the ground in the studio transformed into an arena for a merciless fight. “Stay here, Lula!”said the outgoing president, while his opponent turned his back on him. “No, I don’t want to stay near you!”, replied the former steelworker, who often approached very close to the cameras to address the viewers eye to eye.
Lula attacked his opponent on his international policy, a subject which had hardly been touched on during previous televised debates. “Under your government, Brazil has become a pariah. Nobody wants to receive you and nobody comes here”he launched. The debate was repeatedly interrupted by shouting from campaign teams in an attempt to destabilize the candidates.