Brazil starts campaigns for presidential runoff

Brasilia, Oct 3 (Prensa Latina) The campaigns of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday reactivate their strategic work toward a runoff vote in Brazil on October 30.

Despite the political campaigns in recent months, Lula, candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT), and Bolsonaro, who seeks a reelection for the Liberal Party, failed to obtain an absolute majority of votes at the polls, that is, more than half of the valid votes (excluding blank and null votes), as the national legislation to be elected establishes.

With 99.98 percent of the electronic votes counted, Lula got 48.43 percent of the votes versus 43.20 percent for Bolsonaro, the Superior Electoral Court reported on its website.

Faced with the result, PT president Gleisi Hoffmann thanked the Brazilian people for the trust and more than 58 million votes for Lula in the first round. “We won in the first round and we will win in the runoff vote,” she stated.

For months, the opinion polls have pointed to the PT candidate as the favorite to return to the Planalto Palace, seat of the Executive Power, even with a victory in the first round held this Sunday.

The former labor leader thanked the confidence of all who supported him and warned that the moment is to continue the fight and win at the end of the month.

The former Army captain considered that in this next stage of the campaign, “everything becomes equal, the time (to campaign) for each side becomes equal.”