Far-right Candidate Leads in First Round of Brazilian Presidential Election

The Brazilian presidential election has gone to a second round after no candidate was able to secure a decisive majority of votes. The main competition in the first round was between Jair Bolsonaro, the 63-year-old far-right candidate, and Fernando Haddad, the candidate from the Workers' Party and former mayor of São Paulo. According to Al Jazeera, neither was able to achieve 50% of the votes cast. Haddad was the deputy to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, who has faced harsh criticism from members of the far-right party. Lula has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for financial corruption, and scandals involving the left in Brazil have led Bolsonaro to label them as 'the biggest criminals in Brazilian history.' Following the counting of over 99% of the votes, it was announced that Bolsonaro secured 46% of the votes while Haddad received 29%. The second round of elections will be held on October 28, and reports indicate a significant polarization in Brazilian society. After the announcement of the first round results, Bolsonaro questioned the integrity of the electronic voting machines in Brazil, suggesting that if there were no issues, everyone would know the name of the president. His supporters celebrated outside his home in Rio de Janeiro, referring to him as the 'hope' of the Brazilian people and a 'legend.' Despite predictions that voters would turn away from him due to his statements against homosexuals, women, and other minority groups, disillusionment with 14 years of leftist governance and economic stagnation has allowed this far-right candidate, who campaigned on promises to tackle crime, to achieve a semi-definitive victory in the first round. Bolsonaro, a former army officer and a member of the 'Social Liberal' party, has been accused by his opponents of racism, hostility towards free media, and harboring ambitions for a military return to power in Brazil. His statements on various issues have often sparked controversy; he has claimed that men and women should not receive equal pay and stated that if he had a gay son, he would prefer him to 'die in an accident.' Alongside the presidential election, elections for the House of Representatives and Senate were also held, with only a small percentage of those votes counted and announced so far. Initial counts indicate that the 'Democratic Movement' and 'Social Democracy' parties have secured more Senate seats, followed by the 'Socialist' and 'Democratic Workers' parties. Since the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, Brazil has been a scene of political tensions and economic challenges.