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Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday to choose between Luis Inacio Lula da Silva or Jair Bolsonaro. The picture shows the challenger Inacio Lula da Silva. Photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE
October 28 (UPI) – Brazilians will head to the polls on Sunday as the world’s fourth-largest democracy holds a key presidential election.
far right president Jair Bolsonaroa Christian nationalist who Coronavirus disease The pandemic, his deforestation policy Amazon And his attack on the country’s electoral system, facing legendary leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
October 2, Lula won 48 percent of the vote in the first round, but fell short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. Most polls gave Lula a double-digit lead, but Bolsonaro still had 43 percent of the vote. Since then, the polls have tightened, according to NPR.
However, an IPEC poll on Monday put Lula at 50 percent and Bolsonaro at 43 percent, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Lula, a former union leader who led Brazil through a period of economic growth during his presidency from 2003 to 2010, introduced social programs to eradicate poverty in the country.
However, Brazil’s public ministry launched a full investigation into corruption allegations in 2015, and he was convicted in January 2018 on charges of accepting more than $1 million in bribes from the country’s Petrobras and participating in a money-laundering scheme.
After a widely criticized investigation, Lula was sentenced to 12 years in prison and appealed. He was released in November 2019 when Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court ruled that imprisonment on pending appeals was illegal. His conviction was finally nullified last year.
Bolsonorao touts his friendship with the former president Donald Trump He also said the only way he could lose was voter fraud. He also recently stepped up his criticism of the electoral court and its justices, accusing the chief justice of bias.
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