Brazil’s Bolsonaro launches his presidential bid in landmark elections he characterizes as “good vs. evil”

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro made official his bid to run for reelection in October, giving him three months to close a considerable gap to secure victory. The Liberal Party formally approved Bolsonaro’s candidacy at its convention Sunday in a Rio de Janeiro stadium.

Support was widely expected, given that the unconventional conservative president has effectively been campaigning for months, crisscrossing the country to drum up support and remind voters why they shouldn’t back his nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“We don’t need another ideology that hasn’t worked anywhere else in the world. We need to improve what we have,” Bolsonaro said on stage, surrounded by ministers, former ministers, family, and other allies.

“Our life wasn’t easy, but one thing that comforts me isn’t seeing a communist sitting in that chair of mine.”

Bolsonaro has characterized the upcoming race as a battle between good and evil, echoing his 2018 campaign that presented him as an outsider crusading to restore law, order, and conservative values to a wayward nation.

Several supporters of the president told The Associated Press that if Bolsonaro doesn’t win a second term, Brazil will follow the catastrophic lead of Venezuela and Argentina.

And many spoke about how they don’t trust polls that show Bolsonaro trailing and fully expect him to win.

Lula da Silva leads all polls to return to his former job. In 2018 he was removed from that race due to a corruption conviction. That enabled Bolsonaro to cruise to victory.

Da Silva’s conviction was magically annulled last year by the Supreme Court, which in recent months has increasingly outed itself as left-wing activist.

Many say Bolsonaro faces an uphill battle. His approval ratings have recovered after dropping during the pandemic, but not convincingly enough.

The years of grueling campaigning against him by the leading Brazilian media companies have created an image of the conservative leader in the minds of Brazilians, especially the less educated, that is virtually impossible to get out.

Since only 1% of Brazilians speak fluent English or any other foreign language well enough, the large lower middle class and the poor are informed exclusively by what the Brazilian media houses chew up for them.

In one of the latest polls conducted by the PoderData polling institute in July, 35% favored him, and 47% of respondents said they would vote for Lula da Silva, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

As everywhere, however, the polls should not be taken too seriously. This is even more true in Brazil than elsewhere.