BRASILIA: Far-right front-runner Jair Bolsonaro appealed to Brazilians on Friday to turn out to vote for him on Sunday and give him an outright victory to avoid a run-off that some polls say he could lose to a leftist challenger.
Brazil’s most polarized election since the end of military rule in 1985 pits Bolsonaro, a former Army captain running on a law-and-order platform, against leftist Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party, whose leader is in jail for corruption.
Bolsonaro said he was 6 million votes short of winning the election on Sunday by a majority. If a run-off was necessary, it would be held on Oct. 28 between the two leading candidates.
“Let’s avoid a second round,” he appealed to supporters in a live Facebook feed, asking them to convince relatives and friends to vote for him.
An Ibope opinion poll on Wednesday had Bolsonaro nine points ahead of Haddad, but showed that he could lose a run-off. Final polls on Saturday will determine if a second vote will be needed.
Bolsonaro said an outright win on Sunday would give him a strong mandate to take office without having to enter the traditional horse-trading with political parties needed by Brazilian presidents to form coalition government.
About 26 percent of voters say they have yet to decide who they will vote for, according to the most recent poll released on Thursday by Datafolha, which showed that outright victory by Bolsonaro was still possible but not likely.
Bolsonaro, who is recovering from a near-fatal knife attack while he was campaigning, skipped the last presidential debate of the campaign on Thursday night on Brazil’s largest broadcaster TV Globo.
He said he was under doctors’ orders to stay away from the debate, but he gave an interview that aired on a rival network on Thursday night.
His decision was emblematic of his unconventional presidential bid that has eschewed traditional campaigning in favor of grassroots organizing through social media and selective interviews.
Bolsonaro has tapped into disillusionment with a weak economy, political graft and rising violence.
A Thursday survey from pollster Datafolha found Bolsonaro had 35 percent support, a jump of 3 percentage points since Tuesday. Haddad stood at 22 percent.
In the TV interview, Bolsonaro slammed Haddad for being a “puppet” of jailed former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Haddad, a former mayor of Sao Paulo, was confirmed at the top of the Workers Party ticket three weeks ago, replacing Lula, who was barred from running due to a corruption conviction. He has called Lula a key adviser, but has denied any plans to pardon the former president or give him a role in government.
Right-wing front-runner calls on Brazil to elect him on Sunday
Right-wing front-runner calls on Brazil to elect him on Sunday
- Bolsonaro said he was 6 million votes short of winning the election on Sunday by a majority
- Bolsonaro has tapped into disillusionment with a weak economy, political graft and rising violence
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
