Jair Bolsonaro: Far-right candidate wins Brazil poll

[appalachiablue]

11. Real bad news for Brazil & democracy. Still, keep up the fight for progress.

The Guardian, Oct. 28, 'Opponents Fear Far-Right Will Plunge Brazil Back Into Authoritarianism.'



But there was also concern outside the polling station about the consequences of electing a populist provocateur notorious for praising Brazil’s 1964-85 military regime and foreign autocrats. “In the current climate, we are scared of a candidate like this.”

After casting his vote for Haddad at Gonzaguinha primary school, Antonio da Silva Lima, a bricklayer, said he was rooting for a reversal that would prevent Bolsonaro plunging Brazil back into authoritarianism. “I lived through the dictatorship and we don’t want to go back to that. It’s dangerous,” said Lima, 61. “I know what dictatorship means. It means torture, do you know what I’m saying?”
“If you ask him about education he talks about the economy, if you ask about the economy he talks about security … Haddad is the only one with actual proposals.”

“The way Bolsonaro’s people talk is aggressive,” Albuquerque added. “They’re always swearing.” Francisco Rodrigues, 33, foresaw a return to the bad old days of poverty and police repression should Bolsonaro emerge victorious. “Dirt roads and police humiliation,” he predicted, recalling occasions in the past when he had been forced to walk past bullet-riddled corpses on his way to work.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/28/jair-bolsonaro-on-brink-of-victory-in-brazil-as-fears-for-democracy-grow

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/28/jair-bolsonaro-wins-brazil-presidential-election

Over nearly three decades in politics, he has become notorious for his hostility to black, gay and indigenous Brazilians and to women, as well as for his admiration of dictatorial regimes, including the one that ruled Brazil from 1964 until 1985. “The extreme right has conquered Brazil,” Celso Rocha de Barros, a Brazilian political columnist, told the election night webcast of Piauí magazine. “Brazil now has a more extremist president than any democratic country in the world ... we don’t know what is going to happen.”