 On Sunday, October 30, the eyes of the world will be on Brazil as the second round of the presidential elections are set to be held. Two candidates form President Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, bringing two very different visions of Brazil, the region and the entire world into this contest. So it's no wonder that everyone is curious about what is happening in these elections, what is the campaigning like, what do these two candidates stand for? To answer all these questions, at NewsClick and People's Dispatch, we have with us Zoe Alexandra of People's Dispatch. She's been in Brazil for over a month getting a sense of what's happening on the ground, what are the waves so to speak and what are the agenda items, what are the key issues in these campaigns. Zoe, thank you so much for joining us. You have been in Brazil for over a month covering the first round of elections, covering a number of rallies that have taken place, keeping a close watch on social media reports from all across the country. So first of all, I think the immediate question before a lot of people is what do the polls, what is the polling like right now, what do the polls say? There was a lot of controversy after the first round because the polls were not able to predict Bolsonaro's performance so well. So right now, of course, keeping with the understanding that these are all really rough numbers, what does the polling say? Well, the polling is saying that still Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party, the Progressive Workers' Party of Brazil with the Gerardo Alckmann will win in the second round of these elections. The margin is much slimmer than it showed in the first round. As we report on people's dispatch, the numbers actually did give an accurate representation of how much Lula to win. But of course, as you said, give an inaccurate number of how much Bolsonaro ended up getting. It's right now looking at Lula just crossing over 50%, 51%, 53%, and Bolsonaro trailing behind with 47 or 49%. There's two candidates, so it will be very, very close. As we've reported and as we've seen on the streets, really, it's a really polarizing election. And so it is looking to be a very, very slim margin. But all major polling services are showing that there will be a Workers' Party victory. Again, as you said, it is hard to depend on these polls, especially given the first round confusion. But I think they've also attempted to try out new strategies, new methodologies. One of the big factors that actually accounted for this discrepancy was one that Bolsonaro has laid a lot of mistrust in these polling services. So many Bolsonaro voters were not actually responding to the questionnaires when they happened. And also that a large section of Lula supporters actually abstains from the elections. People who they assumed would support Lula in these elections did not participate in the first round. And so I think if we're going to see a change in the abstention, a lot of time people will participate in the second round, as opposed to a first round elections, there may be these may be more accurate numbers. So that's all on the table. But as I said, it's very, very close. And I think people are very apprehensive about having too much of an optimistic mindset, given what happened in the first round. Absolutely. Right. Zoe, like you aptly said, it's a very polarizing election in 2018. We saw a lot of these polarizing tactics and 2022 seems no different. So could you maybe talk a bit about what has been actually happening in the campaign space itself? What are the kind of campaigns that are going on right now as the elections approach? Well, it's important to mention that the reason this election is so polarized is because of the long, long, long campaign that Brazilian media, the judiciary and the far right has been carrying out against the Workers' Party. And so coming into these elections, all of the dirty campaigns that we're seeing online on social media carried out by the Bolsonaro campaign is really building on years and years of determined and repeated strategies against the Workers' Party. And there exists a sentiment in Brazilian society, the Anti-Workers' Party, Anti-Petismo, that has been building that, of course, consummate in the coup against in 2007, 2016, Lula's imprisonment in 2018. And so really, we can't even look at these elections without remembering that whole history and that building against the Workers' Party, of building the sentiment of this common sense that the Workers' Party is corrupt, that the Workers' Party is anti-religion, that the Workers' Party wants to make all of Brazilian society gay, which is a crazy accusation, that they want to liberalize abortion, that they want to destroy the Brazilian family. All of these very emotional, very deep-seated values of Brazilian society that the far right has essentially been trying to instill in Brazilian society over the past decade. And of course, in the electoral period, this intensifies to a great deal. And so as you said, in these since the first rounds, there's been an intensification of the fake news campaign calling Lula Satanic, saying that he is related to criminal gangs. He did a big event in a favela, which is very important because a large, the majority of Brazil's population actually lives in cities and a large majority of them are poor, of the people in Brazil are poor. So a lot of them live in favelas, not visiting favelas is actually excluding a huge part of the population. But as we know, there's a high concentration of organized crime in these areas for many, many reasons. Lula visits a favela and immediately after Bolsonaro supporters start saying that he has links to organized crime, he wore a hat that is associated to one of the neighborhoods and they started saying that that actually was the the symbols for a gang in the neighborhood. So all of these kinds of things when it, you know, just trying to make it out that Lula is a criminal that he's a thief and using all sorts of different ways to do this. However, there was a very strong campaign as well from the left. And it's not, you know, necessarily fake news as the right is doing, but it's actually pulling up real concrete facts about Bolsonaro, concrete facts about his political associations. He's changed party so many times, so it's not really specifically about his party and trying to bring those to light. So for example, in a recent interview, he had said that he saw some young Venezuelan girls and that there was a sexual tension and vibe between them. He followed them into the house. And it turns out that it was, in his words, a house of prostitutes. And so this clip from the interview ended up going viral. Bolsonaro was forced to respond, backtracked on everything. But it's really just to give a sense of the intensity of this campaign. It's being fought on social media. It's being fought fiercely. Bolsonaro has been forced to respond because of the very, very intense strategies from the left as well. The left is having to respond as well. We're seeing it's a new level of campaigning. This is no longer about going out to the streets and talking about your campaign proposals. This is about attacking your opponent, trying to make them look weak, trying to do everything you can to show that you have the better proposal for Brazil. For Bolsonaro, this is about instilling fear and hatred. Fulula is showing the reality of what the Bolsonaro government has been and the reality of who Bolsonaro is that he's a hypocrite that he has unsavory political ties, unsavory social ties. So it's been very, very intense. Right. So you mentioned campaign proposals. And if you look at Fulula, I think a lot of the coverage has been about his remarkable comeback, how he's fought back against allegations of corruption, even his earlier terms as president. But much lesser focus on what actually concretely he is proposing to the people of Brazil at this very difficult time for the country. So could you maybe for our viewers also tell us some of the key points of the Lula campaign in terms of what are their concrete proposals before the people? Definitely. I think a lot of the campaign proposals that Lula has is precisely resuming a lot of the proposals and the campaigns and the programs that he actually developed during his presidency in the 2000s. One of the key strategies of the right wing after the coup against Enver Rousseff was essentially reversing a lot of the advances, a lot of the conquests of the working class in Brazil and of what the PT governments were able to achieve in the country, stopping the program Bolsa Familia, which was one of the key factors which eliminated hunger in Brazil, stopping a lot of the or cutting the resources significantly for a lot of the programs that helped poor and working class people access university. Under Lula, there's a huge growth, a huge increase of the number of people that were able to access universities, not only because of scholarship programs, but actually he built new federal universities, new public universities, so people in regions that never had access to university would be able to. So increasing access to education, increasing access to social assistance programs to help people emerge out of this extreme poverty, which of course has been increased by the COVID-19 pandemic, but definitely saw a huge increase because of the cuts to these social policies. Another huge area which we've covered in people's dispatch, especially with people's health dispatch and the people's health movement, is about access to healthcare. The SUS, the SUSE program, the unified healthcare system is the largest public health system in the entire world. That's one of the best programs there is. Yet under Bolsonaro, this system has received significant cuts to its budget. It's no longer able to give quality care to the people of Brazil as they need, and especially as was shown that they need during the pandemic. This system is really incredible. I mean, you or I could go to Brazil, get sick, and have completely free treatment, completely free medicine because of this system. It's incredible and it must be upheld. And that's one of Lula's huge proposals is that putting more funding into SUSE, making sure that Brazil can be a leader in science and technology research during the pandemic. One of the institutes in Sao Paulo was able to actually develop the vaccine and was key in vaccine distribution in the state. And so all of these are key areas for Lula, healthcare, education, access to employment, job creation, and of course the recovery of the state enterprises, which have also been deeply privatized, undermined and cut under the Bolsonaro and Temer governments, and a recuperation of the labor rights that were also withdrawn from the Brazilian people and that are constantly under attack, pension rights, all of the things that we've been covering in the past six years that have been under attack by the successive right-wing governments. Right, and climate too, I think is an aspect of it as well. Definitely, that's super important to mention. Of course, the climate has been at the center of this, the attacks on the Amazon, Bolsonaro's biggest allies are the agro business sector, the sectors that have gone into the Amazon rainforest and increased deforestation by unprecedented rates. Different studies have come out. Brasile de Fato published a very interesting report about the support from the sectors that are carrying out environmental crimes of logging, of illegal mining, of land grabbing, and these are the exact sectors that are giving support to Bolsonaro. And, you know, climate science is not only from Brazil but across the world to have seen with a lot of worry what's been happening under the Bolsonaro government. He seems to not be able to see in any sense the medium-term impacts of the deforestation of the Amazon and what this will do not only to Brazil, not only to the Amazon region in South America but to the world. A lot of people are talking about the Amazon being the lung of the world and saw with a lot of worry when there was, for example, the day of burning, when Bolsonaro essentially gave a free license and incentive to people to burn large sections of the Amazon. This is a common practice but this was amplified under his presidency. And so so many of these different phenomenons are incredibly important. Lula and other candidates who have joined his campaign Simón Tiberci and others have essentially said that there will be a zero deforestation policy that all illegal deforestation will be completely banned and that protection and conservation of the Amazon is of the highest order. Lula has also said that supporting the indigenous communities that live in this region, we've seen a lot of the indigenous peoples in the Amazon under attack by these illegal miners, by these illegal loggers. They have been the first victims. There's been a genocide of the indigenous people because they're the ones that are protecting the rainforest. They're the ones that protecting the environment and have tried to stand in the way of the illegal activities in the region, try to protect their region and they have as a result come under attack. So all of these areas are extremely extremely important and will have impacts, as I said, not only for Brazil but really for the world. Right Zoe. So in this context, of course, Jair Bolsonaro, as we know, has had a disastrous term to say the least, especially the handling of COVID widely criticized. And of course, like you said, many of the other issues regarding welfare policies, regarding pensions, etc. But in this election, what really is his pitch considering that his record, his popularity also during most of his term has not been very great. So what really is his pitch at this point of time? He really doesn't have a strong policy pitch. Three of the areas that he's tried to emphasize on are kind of these moral values, defending the family, which is of course a very vague, a very diffuse idea, defending the family, defending religion, defending Brazil, standing up. But one of the things that he's actually had success in, which is, and he's tried to really capitalize on is that some of the very, very, very limited social support programs, Auxílio Brasil and other social support programs, giving some subsidies, he has essentially timed to come out during right ahead of the second round. So he there's a 600 hais, which is just over $100 to give people an idea, assistance program to foreign working class families. This of course, replaced the very effective Bolta Familia and other programs which were much broader, which gave much more money and were actually more effective. But he through through very long negotiations during the pandemic, created this program to give support to families. This was expertly timed to come out just before the second round. This is one of his huge pitches. Look, I'm not abandoning the working people of Brazil. I'm giving this economic support. There's also been some fluctuation in prices. So we've seen that, of course, inflation, we've seen this as a global trend has increased over the last period, not just because the COVID-19 pandemic, but of course, the war in Ukraine, and in many countries, this has been exacerbated by, you know, not investing in the people, you know, the deindustrialization that we've seen in Brazil are extremely, extremely dependent on global prices. And so the prices have drastically gone up in the country. And in these days, if there's a tiny, tiny, tiny decrease, Bolsonaro will say, see, that was us. We actually caused that decrease. And that's going to happen even more. This doesn't have to do with government investment. This has to do with the markets like in Bolsonaro. So that's one of his main pitches as well. And, you know, at the end of the day, his main point of attack is saying that we're not PT. We're not robbers. We're not thieves. I wasn't in prison. I'm a man of the family. I'm a man of God. We're not communists as well, I guess. We're not communists. I think there was a pretty popular clip that went around on social media of his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, who has very, very strong links to different Baptist churches, huge mega churches in Brazil, and her saying that Brazil is the last frontier against communism. This is the messaging, but really nothing concrete, very vague, and essentially driven by fear, driven by the sense of we're in a crisis, but I'm actually your only savior, but I don't have any real concrete plans to do anything. So I think it's really key. And it's really distressing because in this moment of crisis, you would think maybe he will transcend this fear, this attempt to drive hatred in the Brazilian people. But no, that's really been the focus of the campaign. Right. And Zoya, of course, finally, it's not just a presidential election, some key governor elections also taking place. So could you please quickly run through some of the important contests as well? Yes. So the first round of the elections in October 2nd, of course, saw many deputies on the state and federal level, governorships and the presidency. The governors and the presidency are the only ones that has the option of going to the second round. So there's several states that will see this runoff election. One of the huge, very important races in addition to the presidential races, you said, is the governor's race in the city and the state of Sao Paulo. And this is, for a lot of people, is kind of a parallel showdown because you have one, you have the 2018 presidential candidate Fernando Addad of the Workers' Party who stepped in when Lula was barred from participating in the election 2018, facing off against Bolsonaro supporter Tarsiso Freitas, who's actually from the state of Rio de Janeiro. He's not even from Sao Paulo. This has been a huge point of discontent. And they're facing off in this runoff election in Sao Paulo. In the sense it is kind of a Bolsonaro versus Workers' Party runoff. A lot of similar discourse that we're seeing, a lot of similar attack campaigns. And this will be extremely important because as we saw in the first round of elections, Sao Paulo is one of the biggest electorates. It's the largest state in Brazil, the largest population. And it had the closest numbers in terms of support for the Workers' Party versus support for Bolsonaro. It has a very large conservative belt, the city of Campinas, Sorocaba. These are large agribusiness towns that have historically supported Bolsonaro. The numbers are very close. There was a poll that came out yesterday that gave a three-point percentage difference between Tarsiso and Haddad. He led the first round in a surprising victory. Many people didn't see this coming. But with the increased polarization, the kind of centrist candidate that people predicted that was going to win actually came in third place. So this is one of the big races. I know there's a governor's race in Pernambuco as well. So both of the candidates in Pernambuco have actually expressed support for Lula just because in the Northeast, if you don't support Lula, you're kind of on the outset. You're not really reading the mood of the people. So that's another one. But I think really this Sao Paulo race is going to be very, very crucial. It seems like there is hope yet for Fernando Haddad. There was a bigger margin between the two in the first round results. Now that margin is tightening. He's had a lot of strong events. Tarsiso has had a lot of blunders. He has very strong links with, of course, Roberto Jefferson, who earlier this week as we report on people's dispatch, was the deputy that fired open fire on police, military police in Rio de Janeiro and threw grenades at them when they tried to arrest him. Horrible active violence against the public service. And also of course, as many people pointed out, a clear indication of his political privilege and his white privilege as he was able to be arrested after shooting and throwing grenades at the police, which is almost unheard of. So a lot up at stake. And I think Sunday is going to be a nail biting day. We're going to be definitely following along. Last, the first round, it was expected that maybe after two or three hours, the results would be out and ended up being much longer. And I think this Sunday, we're looking at four or five hours because of the close race, it's going to be really down to, it's going to be down to the last few hours to see this difference. Some people are predicting a one million vote difference between the two candidates. So it's going to be intense. Thank you so much, Zoe, for that very detailed analysis of what's happening in Brazil right now. We'll be looking forward to your coverage on Sunday and in the days following as well, which will be crucial. Thanks so much for having me. We'll definitely giving a detailed update as I come. And that's all we have for today. We'll be closely covering the lead up and the election process in Brazil, the campaigns, the slogans, the excitement and the promises that are being put forward by the candidates to the people at this very crucial moment for Brazil. Keep watching Newsclick and People's Dispatch.