Far right on the march and Lula’s failures: key drivers of Flávio Bolsonaro’s Brazil surge
Experts say strength of evangelical church and stubbornness of Lula, 80, also helped propel Jair Bolsonaro’s son to first-round election win On Sunday night, as the scale of the far-right triumph in Brazil sank in, an adapted football chant rang out in one of Rio’s most leftwing areas. “Let’s turn this around, Lu-laaaaa! Let’s turn this around, Lu-laaaaa! Let’s turn this around, Lu-laaaaa!” crestf
Some critics have also pointed to Lula’s age as his achilles heel and blame him for failing to produce an obvious successor. He will turn 81 two days after the election’s 25 October second round. One recent story in the Economist called Lula “a doddering leftie” and compared him to the “geriatric leader” Joe Biden, who was forced to abandon his 2024 re-election campaign after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.
Traumann called questions over Lula’s physical or mental state “ridiculous”. “When you see him speak, you can tell it’s not about this,” he said of the gym-going octogenarian.
Mello Franco agreed: “Unlike Biden, Lula has at no point shown any kind of physical frailty or cognitive impairment. I don’t think this was an issue.”
But Traumann did see one parallel with the former US president: like Biden, Lula was stubborn, had not listened enough to others, and appeared to have thought decent economic indicators were enough to ensure re-election. “This disconnection from reality reminds me of Biden,” he said, attributing it to “the stubbornness of age”.
From the start of the campaign, Lula seemed to believe “the election was in the bag”.
