(Brasilia) A judge at Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) has ordered Lula to stop airing a campaign ad associating Jair Bolsonaro with cannibalism, three weeks before the second round of a high-tension presidential election.
Posted at 10:35 a.m.
In his judgment published late Saturday, Judge Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino found that this advertisement broadcast by the campaign team of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva included an excerpt from a video “taken out of context” .
In this video from 2016, the far-right president, who at the time was a backbencher, claimed he would be able to eat human flesh, during an interview at the New York Times.
Mr. Bolsonaro described there what he presented as a ritual of the Yanomami indigenous community, in the state of Roraima (north).
“They cook it for two or three days and they eat it with bananas. I wanted to see the Indian get cooked. And then they tell me: “if you see it, you have to eat it”. I eat it ! “, says Mr. Bolsonaro in this video, which has gone viral on social networks in Brazil.
“After all the nonsense that Brazil has already heard from Bolsonaro, here is another, even more appalling one: he reveals that he would eat human flesh. Brazil can’t stand Bolsonaro anymore,” says a voiceover in the video released by Mr. Lula’s campaign team.
“In the way these words were taken from the interview, the original meaning of the message was changed, suggesting that the candidate could admit the possibility of consuming human flesh in any circumstance”, underlined the judge of the TSE.
A leader of the Yanomami community, Junior Hekurari, has also categorically denied the existence of cannibalistic rituals in his culture.
Saturday morning, during a press conference after a meeting in Campinas, near Sao Paulo (southeast), Lula had refuted the idea that these references to cannibalism had been a low blow against his opponent .
“We didn’t invent anything, it’s not Lula’s campaign that says that, it’s him who says it, to an American journalist. It’s not malice on our part, we just give information to the people about our opponent, ”retorted the former president (2003-2010).
The tension has risen a notch in recent days during the campaign for the second round, on October 30.
On Friday, Jair Bolsonaro had been particularly virulent at a press conference, calling Lula a “drunkard”, while accusing him of wanting to “bring a clique of incompetents to lead Brazil”.
The latest Datafolha poll published on Friday gives Lula the winner with 53% of the vote, against 47% for Bolsonaro.