The polemical far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro was set to be elected the next president of Brazil last night after he defeated his rival Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party in yesterday’s run-off election.
With most votes counted last night, he had what appeared to be an unassailable lead confirming exit polls that put the former army captain on 56 per cent against 44 per cent for Haddad.
Bolsonaro’s victory is the first time the far right has come to power in Brazil via the ballot box and marks a clear break with the country’s political order established with the return of democracy in the 1980s.
Opinion polls had shown the race tightening in the final stretch which had been marked by revelations that Bolsonaro’s campaign has benefited from illegal contributions from businessmen supporters and controversy over a video of his son boasting about how easy it would be to shut down the supreme court.
During his 28 years in congress he was a constant and often violent critic of democratic values and a notorious admirer of the country’s previous military dictatorship and its torturers. His running mate is a former four-star general who when still in uniform speculated about the possibility of a military takeover and floated the idea of having a ‘council of notables’ rewrite the constitution.
But Haddad ran out of time to see if the momentum polls showed swinging his way could carry him past his opponent. In the end Bolsonaro’s lead from the first round earlier this month of 18 million votes proved too much for the former mayor of São Paulo to overcome.
Bolsonaro will take over a country still struggling to emerge from its longest ever recession which has left over 14 million people unemployed and caused a 10 per cent drop in per capita income.
