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Brazil’s right-wing Bolsonaro narrowly misses first round win in presidential election

7-10-2018 < RT 55 322 words
 

Brazilian right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro will head to the second round of the election, facing leftist candidate Fernando Haddad on October 28, after narrowly failing to secure fifty percent of the vote in the first round.


Bolsonaro is leading the polls in the first round of the presidential election, with 47 percent of the vote and 92.5 percent of the votes counted. The Congressman will head toward a second-round runoff against Haddad, the former Mayor of São Paulo, who so far has gained 27.9 percent of the popular support.





The 63-year-old conservative candidate, who had advocated a brutal crackdown on crime and graft ahead of the election, is well ahead of his Workers Party rival, whose former leader President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva was barred from running due to his 12-year jail sentence on corruption charges.





The 2018 election is seen as the most polarized vote in the country since the end of military rule in 1985. Bolsonaro, who appears to favor dictatorship, has an active support from a group of retired generals who stand opposed to the 2003-2016 rule of the Workers Party. The Congressman publicly advocates military intervention as a way to fight corruption.


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