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Most of the large Brazilian capitals turned their backs on the candidates supported by the country’s president this Sunday, the ultraconservative Jair bolsonaro, Y they favored the aspirants of the center and the moderate right.
Almost 150 million Brazilian voters were called to the polls to renew the government of 5,569 municipalities for the next four years, in a lawsuit that should have been held in October but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. , one of the most affected countries with 165,000 deaths and almost 6 million infections.
Under strict sanitary measures – with mandatory masks to vote – the municipal elections this Sunday were the first elections to be held in Brazil since the presidential elections of October 2018, in which for the first time in the country’s history the extreme right came to power hand in hand with Bolsonaro.
The day went smoothly, except for delays in the dissemination of the vote due to technical problems, and it registered an increase in abstention compared to the 2016 elections.
In Saint Paul, the city with the most voters in the country, with almost 9 million, the current mayor took advantage, Bruno Covas (from the right-wing PSDB center), with about a third of the votes (32.8 percent).
However, Covas, 40 years old and undergoing cancer treatment, will have to be measured in the second round of November 29 with the leftist and former presidential candidate Guilherme Boulos, the great surprise of the lawsuit when finishing second with 20.2 percent and absorbing the progressive vote that traditionally belonged to the former president’s Workers Party (PT) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Boulos, a 38-year-old university professor, belongs to the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), a group that was created by dissidents from the PT in the past decade and which has so far attracted the vote of the young, urban and highly educated population.
The candidate supported by Bolsonaro, the conservative Celso Russomanno, finished in fourth place, with just over 10 percent of the support, while the PT candidate, Jilmar Tatto, obtained only 8.6 percent.
In Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city in Brazil with almost 5 million voters, the center-right Eduardo Paes finished first with almost 40 percent, but with insufficient support to avoid a second shift, in which the current first mayor, the ultra-conservative and evangelical leader, will be measured Marcelo crivella, backed by Bolsonaro with 21.9 percent of the vote.
The head of state himself voted this Sunday in the Fluminense capital, where he began his career in politics as a councilor 30 years ago.
DUEL BETWEEN COUSINS IN RECIFE
In Belo Horizonte, the third city with the most voters, the current centrist councilor Alexandre Kalil avoided a second round by exceeding the band of more than 50 percent of votes and left the “Bolsonarista” by the wayside. Bruno Engler, which stayed at around 10 percent.
Recife, one of the capitals of the Northeast of Brazil, remained faithful to the progressive spectrum and the mayor’s office will be settled between Joao fields, the very young 26-year-old candidate of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB, center-left), and his cousin Marilia arraes, representative of the Workers’ Party.
Police Chief Patricia Domingos, supported by Bolsonaro, finished in fourth place with less than 15 percent of the ballots.
In the other two large cities of the Northeast, Salvador went to the centrist Bruno reis, while Fortaleza gave a small satisfaction to Bolsonaro, since the candidate he supported, Wagner Sousa Gomes, known as “Captain Wagner”, will contest the Second round with an aspirant from the center-left.
In Porto Alegre, considered the capital of the south of the country, Manuela D’Ávila, of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), ended up practically tied with the centrist Sebastiao Melo and the mayoralty will be played in el ballot in two weeks.
In Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, the Colonel Menezes, backed by Bolsonaro, got just over 10 percent and was left out of the second round, where former governors Amazonino Mendes and David Almeida will meet.
ATTACK ATTEMPT NEUTRALIZED
In a press conference, the president of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Luis Roberto Barroso, explained that there were no major incidents on the day, beyond remarkable delay of the counting in some cities of the country, among them Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
The judge revealed that an attack on the TSE systems that hold information from the Electoral Justice was “totally” neutralized.
“There was an attempt by a large number of people trying to enter (online) at the same time and bring down the system, but everything is working well,” said Barroso, who said that the attack came from computers in Brazil, the United States and New Zealand. and vindicated the security of the electronic ballot boxes, used for more than two decades in Brazil.
Sending information from these polls to the TSE was not at risk, since the transmission is made through an encrypted network of the court itself, which was not affected.
In addition to the delays in the dissemination of the vote count, there were other incidents on a mostly quiet day, including the usual long lines at some polling stations in a country where voting is mandatory.
In Macapa, regional capital of the remote state of Amapá (north), there were no municipal elections this Sunday due to the postponement decreed by the Electoral Justice this week due to problems in the energy supply in the region.
