MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Bolsonaro's popularity coming around ahead of presidential elections
It remains an enigma whether Bolsonaro will manage to bring Lula to a runoff after Oct. 30 Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro sees his chances of reelection in October improve after a drop in unemployment announced Friday helped him narrow the gap against the former head of state Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva.
Unemployment fell to 11.2% between November of 2021 and January 2022, while Bolsonaro keeps allocating almost US$ 30 billion to policies aimed at reactivating consumption and keeping the economy as safe as possible from the war in Ukraine.
The new unemployment figures were 3.3% lower than those recorded in the same period of 2021, in addition to being the lowest since 2016, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
However, the purchasing power of salaries has dropped 9.7% year on year, while 4.2% of Brazilians have stopped looking for a job because they could not find one.
Nevertheless, pollster PoderData released a study Friday, which showed Bolsonaro was the candidate with the highest rate of rejection, as 51% of voters reportedly would pick any other contestant. It was a 9% improvement for Bolsonaro compared to December's numbers, while Lula remained the one with the lowest rejection rate: 44 %.
Quaest also published this week that Lula was the favorite for the October 2 elections with 44 % of the voting intentions followed by Bolsonaro's 26 %.
The trend thus is steady: Bolsonaro's figures keep improving, while those of Lula keep dropping, according to both researchers.
Bolsonaro's recovery is linked to a decline in unemployment and to social assistance through the Auxilio Brasil program, in addition to a decrease in COVID-19 cases and deaths.
It remains an enigma, however, whether Bolsonaro will manage to bring Lula to a runoff after Oct. 30.
In this scenario, Bolsonaro Thursday launched the Income and Opportunity program which will pump some R$ 150 billion (US$ 28 billion) into the economy through a series of measures.
”The war that may start will kill more people than the first and second world wars combined, this war is about our food, about food security (...) the basics will be missing”, Bolsonaro, a retired Army captain, has warned.
It also remains to be seen how a recent sharp increase in the price of fuel will impact Bolsonaro's trailing popularity.
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Read all comments”This week Brazil’s Superior Justice Court ordered the Justice Ministry to grant former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his defense team access to previously sealed information on the existence of partnerships between the US Department of Justice and the Lava Jato investigation task force.
Mar 20th, 2022 - 01:03 pm 0Lula’s defense attorneys have argued for years, however, that this partnership operated on the margins of the law, repeatedly violating both the terms and conditions of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Brazilian national security law, which prohibits things like informal communications between Brazilian and foreign government officials.
In order to clarify this issue, Lula’s defense team requested that the Brazilian Federal Government’s Department of International Legal Cooperation (DRCI) pass over all information on the existence of written cooperation agreements with the US DOJ related to the Lava Jato case against Lula. According to Brazilian law, any partnership between Brazilian government officials and the officials of a foreign government has to be authorized by this Department. The defense team suspects that the Lava Jato task force may have illegally received advice from the US DOJ on establishing sentencing against Lula during the 2018 election year. After President Jair Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister refused to turn over the information, Lula’s defense team filed a motion with the Superior Justice Court.”
https://www.brasilwire.com/lula-gains-access-to-us-lava-jato/
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