If the first round of the Brazilian election campaign left moments of tension and violence, the beginning of the second round promises to surpass it. A judge of the Superior Electoral Court of the Carioca state has banned Lula da Silva from continuing to broadcast a video that associates his rival, Jair Bolsonaro, with cannibalism.
Judge Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino stated in his ruling that the announcement released by Da Silva's team includes a part "taken out of context." In the video, from 2016, Bolsonaro, then a congressman, describes a Yanomami indigenous ritual, in the northern state of Roraima. "The Indian died and they were cooking him. They cook the Indian; that is their culture. It is cooked for two or three days and then they eat it with banana. I wanted to see the Indian being cooked. Afterwards, they told me: 'if you see it, you have to eat it'. I ate it!," he later said in an interview with The New York Times.
Fake New
These statements were used by Lula's team to launch a video, using their reserved advertising spaces on television, shortly after, it went viral across Brazil. In it, they highlighted the 'cannibal facet' of the current president. "We did not invent anything, It is not Lula's campaign that says so, it was he -Bolsonaro- who said so to an American journalist. It is not malice on our part, we are just giving information to the people about our adversary," was the Workers' Party justification of the video.
For the TSE, "in the way these words were taken from the interview, the original meaning of the message was changed, suggesting that the candidate could admit the possibility of consuming human meat in any circumstance." The judge qualified the advertisement as fake news, so he proceeded to prohibit its diffusion.
Bolsonaro's comeback according to the polls
A new stain on a campaign that has fake news as one of its main challenges. Already during the first round, a video went viral with Lula allegedly being drunk while greeting his supporters, and last week, the candidate himself had to deny an alleged pact with satanist shamans.
A tension that is further aggravated by the fact that the latest polls speak of an almost technical tie between the two candidates. According to Datafolha, Lula da Silva, with 50% of voting intentions, is still the favorite to win the presidential seat, but Bolsonaro has managed to climb to a predicted 47% of the vote. During the first round polls, the predictions for the second round were 58-38. The president's comeback has raised alarms among the former president's supporters and the tone of the campaign.
