SAO PAULO: Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is “fomenting violence” and is a danger to democracy, his leftist rival Fernando Haddad told AFP on Saturday.
Haddad, trailing in the polls ahead of an October 28 runoff, argued against Bolsonaro’s pledge to ease gun laws for citizens to combat rampant insecurity and highlighted contentious remarks Bolsonaro has made.
“My adversary foments violence, including a culture of rape,” Haddad said, recalling an episode when Bolsonaro told a congresswoman she didn’t “deserve” to be raped by him.
He stressed he believed Brazil was seeing the biggest peril since returning to democracy three decades ago, saying: “In my opinion, the big threat to the continent is Bolsonaro.”
The charges were made as violent incidents linked to the election occurred in various parts of Brazil. Early this week, a man was stabbed to death in a bar for reportedly yelling support for Haddad’s Workers Party. A transgender woman also said she was beaten by Bolsonaro supporters in the street.
Haddad, a former mayor of Sao Paulo, is fighting to close a big gap between him and Bolsonaro, who admires US President Donald Trump and is nostalgic for Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
Haddad is pushing for televised debates that his rival has so far avoided, initially because of a wound Bolsonaro suffered when a lone assailant stabbed him while campaigning last month.
In the first round of the election last Sunday, Bolsonaro easily dominated, winning 46 percent of the vote to Haddad’s 29 percent.
A subsequent Datafolha survey suggested Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper running on an anti-crime, anti-corruption platform, had 58 percent voter support going into the run-off, against 42 percent for Haddad.
In his interview with AFP in Sao Paulo, Haddad homed in on the frontrunner’s message that has resonated most with Brazilians: Bolsonaro’s law-and-order pledges that include making it easier for citizens to defend themselves with firearms, boosting the police force, and lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 16.
“Arming the population will resolve nothing. It’s the state that has to implement public safety,” he said.
He added that the outgoing government had fallen short in this area, especially in combating organized crime.
Bolsonaro was singularly unsuited to fighting violence, Haddad said, pointing to a campaign moment when the far-right candidate feigned shooting up the Workers Party.
“How can a person preaching intolerance offer security to anyone?” he asked.
Haddad also pushed back against a public perception highlighted by Bolsonaro that the Workers Party, in power from 2003 to 2016, was corrupt — a view confirmed by the incarceration of its icon, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for corruption.
His party had made “errors,” he admitted.
“Our government didn’t brush anything under the carpet. Obviously, what people saw outside the carpet wasn’t pretty but that was combated with legislation we approved and... all organs of the state will be strengthened in our new government,” Haddad said.
“I share the same view as society that corruption is something intolerable.”
But he also pointed to Bolsonaro’s very thin record of being involved in passing laws despite nearly three decades in Congress, saying: “He rails against things. But what he proposes has no consistency whatsoever.”
Haddad declared: “That person is leader in the polls, but he will lose.”
Lula, he said, was “very happy” at Haddad’s performance so far in the elections, especially as he had been a late replacement for the ex-president in September, after a court ruled Lula to be ineligible to run again.
Haddad also tackled attempts by Bolsonaro’s campaign to claim the Workers Party was the same as the Socialist regime running neighboring Venezuela, in crisis under President Nicolas Maduro.
The Workers Party’s run in government in Brazil “didn’t look anything like what is happening in Venezuela,” he said, adding that his party “was born in the challenge to all authoritarian regimes on the left and right — unlike Bolsonaro whose roots are in the military dictatorship.”
Brazil’s presidential candidate Haddad accuses far-right rival of ‘fomenting violence’
Brazil’s presidential candidate Haddad accuses far-right rival of ‘fomenting violence’
- Haddad argued against Bolsonaro’s pledge to ease gun laws for citizens to combat rampant insecurity and highlighted contentious remarks Bolsonaro has made
- In the first round of the election last Sunday, Bolsonaro easily dominated, winning 46 percent of the vote to Haddad’s 29 percent
Afghanistan launches retaliatory attacks on Pakistan as tensions escalate
- At least 66 Afghans have been killed by Pakistan’s strikes, Afghan authorities say
- Afghanistan has called for dialogue while Pakistan ruled out any talks with Kabul
KABUL: Afghanistan has launched new attacks on Pakistan’s military bases, the Afghan defense ministry said on Saturday, as cross-border clashes escalated between the neighbors after months of tension.
The latest flare-up erupted after Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan territory last weekend triggered a retaliatory offensive from Afghanistan along the border on Thursday.
The two countries have engaged in tit-for-tat attacks since, marking the most serious development in ongoing tensions between the two countries, which agreed to a ceasefire last October following a week of deadly clashes.
Afghanistan’s Air Force has “once again launched airstrikes on Pakistani military bases” in Miranshah and Spinwam, the Afghan Ministry of National Defense said on X on Saturday, claiming that the strikes caused “severe damage and heavy casualties.”
“These successful operations were conducted in response to repeated aerial aggressions by the Pakistani military regime,” the ministry said.
Afghan forces also launched similar strikes against military targets in Islamabad and Abbottabad on Friday, which the ministry said was in retaliation of aerial attacks by Pakistani forces in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia.
At least 66 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Pakistani strikes, with another 59 others wounded, according to Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesman for the Afghan government.
Pakistan has maintained that it is targeting only military targets to avoid any civilian casualties, in compliance with international law.
Pakistani officials said its forces have killed more than 330 Afghan fighters and targeted 37 military locations across Afghanistan.
Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesperson for the Afghan government, earlier called for talks to resolve the crisis.
“We have always emphasized peaceful resolution, and now too we want the issue to be resolved through dialogue,” he said on Friday.
However, Pakistan has ruled out any talks with Kabul.
“There won’t be any talks, there is nothing to talk about. There’s no negotiation. Terrorism from Afghanistan has to end,” Mosharraf Zaidi, spokesperson for Pakistan’s prime minister, said on Friday.
Pakistan is accusing the Afghan Taliban of sheltering fighters from the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and allowing them to stage cross-border attacks — a charge Afghanistan denies, saying it does not allow its territory to be used against other countries.
As international calls for mediation grow amid the escalating hostility, Afghans across the country are growing fearful of the violence.
“Everyone heard the jets. This is the first time since the withdrawal of US invaders that we have heard such a horrible noise and news of damage. It is not good for us,” said Kandahar resident Shahid Zamari.
“We had forgotten the US war and its bad impact on us, on our families, on our children. And now this has come upon us again — by Pakistan, and in the holy month of Ramadan.”
When the strikes hit Kabul at around 1:30 a.m. on Friday, Saleema Wardak moved quickly to wake up her six children and escape outside, assuming the strong jolt that shook her house was an earthquake.
“While standing in the yard, my husband told me it was not an earthquake but an explosion. Then we heard the crazy sounds of planes, and shooting from the mountains against the planes,” she told Arab News.
“We hid inside, worried another bomb would fall on us. People say Pakistan is targeting civilians on purpose to increase pressure on the Taliban. So we hid … The world is unjust … They do not value the blood of the poor.”
For Sabawoon, a 23-year-old student from eastern Kunar province’s Asadabad city, the coming days are filled with uncertainties.
“What to do? Where to go? We have to stay and find our way to survive,” he told Arab News. “God willing, nothing bad will happen to us. If they are bombing us, what can we do?”
