(Sao Paulo) Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traded sweeping attacks on Friday, accusing each other of drunkenness and capable of cannibalism respectively, about three weeks from their close second-round duel of the presidential election in Brazil.
Posted at 7:29 p.m.
Left-wing ex-president Lula da Silva’s campaign team unearthed and released an old video in which current far-right president Bolsonaro claims he would be able to eat human flesh.
In this interview given to New York Times in 2016, Mr. Bolsonaro, then a simple federal deputy, described 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 ! “, declares Mr. Bolsonaro in this extract, which has gone viral on social networks in Brazil.
“After all the nonsense that Brazil has already listened to from Bolsonaro, here is another, even more appalling one: he reveals that he would eat human flesh. Brazil can’t stand Bolsonaro anymore,” a voiceover says in the video released by Mr. Lula’s campaign team.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s team retorted that these statements had been “taken out of context”, and announced an appeal to the electoral authorities. And a leader of the Yanomami community, Junior Hekurari, flatly denied the existence of cannibalistic rituals in his culture.
The campaign for the second round, on October 30, has intensified in recent days. The latest Datafolha poll, published on Friday, gives Mr. Lula the winner with 53% of the vote against 47% for Mr. Bolsonaro.
The far-right president, who regularly calls Mr. Lula a “thief”, called him a “drunkard” on Friday during a fiery press conference at the Alvorada Palace, his official residence in Brasilia.
Mr. Lula “will bring a clique of incompetents to order Brazil. It’s not going to work! […] Our freedom is at stake! he got carried away.
The left-wing ex-president reacted by saying that he would not respond to “Bolsonaro’s petty game”. “We are facing a soulless, heartless man,” he added.