RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilians cast ballots Sunday in a divisive presidential run-off election whose front-runner, far-right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, is vowing to rescue the country from crisis with a firm grip.
Bolsonaro - who has tapped deep anti-establishment anger, but repulsed many with his denigrating remarks about women, gays and blacks - faces leftist Fernando Haddad, a former Sao Paulo mayor. Bolsonaro had an eight- to 10-point lead going in, according to two final opinion polls published Saturday, which gave him about 55 percent of the vote. And while Haddad has made up ground - he trailed by 18 points two weeks ago - it would take a dramatic surge for him to win.
“Democracy is at risk, individual freedom is at risk,” Haddad, 55, warned after casting his ballot at a school in Sao Paulo, thronged by supporters clutching red and white roses - as opponents across the street banged pots and pans in protest. “Brazil has woken up in the last few days ... I have a lot of hope in the result,” he said. Bolsonaro, 63, voted at a polling station in Rio de Janeiro, ducking in through a side door to avoid the waiting crowd.
Wearing a green army jacket, he left with a double thumbs-up, saying only that he could not make a statement for security reasons. On Saturday he made his final pitch to voters on social media, the only place he has campaigned since an attacker stabbed him in the stomach at a rally last month, sending him to the hospital for three weeks.
“God willing, (it) will be our new independence day,” he tweeted. The Latin American giant’s elections come on the heels of a punishing recession and staggering corruption scandal.
Bolsonaro outrages a large part of the electorate - and many outside the country - with his overtly misogynistic, homophobic and racist rhetoric.
He once told a lawmaker he opposed that she “wasn’t worth raping;” he has said he would rather see his sons die than come out as gay.
and he commented after visiting one black community that they “do nothing - they’re so useless I doubt they can procreate.”
But an even larger portion of voters reject Haddad and the tarnished legacy of his Workers’ Party.
Haddad is standing as a surrogate for popular - but imprisoned - ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who led Brazil through the boom years of 2003 to 2010, before both the country and his left-wing political project went bust.
The highly controversial Lula, who stands accused of masterminding the massive pilfering of state oil company Petrobras, is serving a 12-year sentence for bribery.
Lacking his mentor’s charisma, Haddad has struggled to unite opposition to Bolsonaro, despite mounting fears over what the former army officer’s presidency would bring.
Bolsonaro, a veteran congressman, is unabashedly nostalgic for Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship (1964-1985), and has been accused of authoritarian tendencies.
But his law-and-order message has resonated.
The election looks set to be decided as much by Brazilians voting against something as for it.
“I’m not very enthusiastic, because I don’t really like either candidate,” Elias Chaim, 23, an engineering student and music producer, told AFP at a polling station facing the legendary beach of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro.
“But I want to vote Haddad, because Bolsonaro’s discourse of hate and intolerance is a risk for our country.”
In Sao Paulo, the economic capital, 51-year-old businesswoman and Bolsonaro backer Ana Lucia Gercici vowed to leave the country if Haddad wins.
“Honest, hardworking people feel wronged after voting for so many thieves. The country’s been ripped wide open,” she said.
Marcos Kotait, 40, a publicist, meanwhile said he had “never seen such a polarized election.”
“It used to be people would actually vote for what they wanted, and not just against something,” he said.
- Country in crisis -
Long prone to dramatic booms and busts, Brazil is currently plunged in a deep national malaise.
It had its worst-ever recession from 2015 to 2016, when the economy shrank nearly seven percent.
The multi-billion-dollar Petrobras scandal has left voters disgusted with the seemingly bottomless corruption of politicians and business executives.
And the country registered a record 63,880 murders last year.
Outgoing President Michel Temer, himself implicated in corruption, is set to leave office on January 1 as the most unpopular president in Brazil’s modern democracy.
Brazil’s 147 million voters can cast their ballots until 2200 GMT.
The results are expected around 2300 GMT.