In a few hours, some 156 million voters will be tuning in to TV Globo to watch the last of three televised debates from the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, scheduled for Sunday. Jair Bolsonaro (PL), the re-election candidate whose presence has not been confirmed, Lula da Silva (PT), the leader of the polls, Simone Tebet (MDB), Ciro Gomes (PDT), Father Kelmon (PTB), Soraya Thronicke (Union Brasil ) and Felipe d’Avila (Novo) are the seven guests, out of a total of 11 candidates, as representatives of parties with at least five parliamentarians.
The debate will begin at 10:30 pm Brasília time, 2:00 am Lisbon time, in Estúdios Globo, in Rio de Janeiro, right after the telenovela “Pantanal”, the remake of a 1990 telenovela of the same name by the extinct Rede Manchete, in the middle of the penultimate week of the exhibition and with an audience of about 20 million.
There will be four blocks, two with free themes and with candidates asking each other questions and two with specific themes, but randomly selected by the production of the program. Questions must be asked within 30 seconds, with an additional minute of response. The candidate chosen to respond must do so within three minutes, attach the answer and the rejoinder.
Afterwards, the seven candidates have 90 seconds to make their final assessment. It was determined by drawing that the latter two will be exactly first in the polls: Lula and Bolsonaro, in that order. If someone is absent from the debate, it is agreed that the absentee’s seat will remain empty and will be identified by his or her name. In fact, the absent candidate may be the subject of questions.
William Bonner, 58, who has hosted Jornal Nacional, the country’s most influential television news program for 26 years, is moderating the debate. The target of criticism from Bolsonaro supporters in recent years – they call the channel “Globolixo” – the journalist has also been in the crosshairs of Lula voters – they chanted the slogan “outside Globo people are not crazy”.
The program is announced in Globo’s teasers as “decisive”. But are TV debates really decisive in Brazil? DN spoke to two experts in politics and one in television.
“Opinion polls show that Lula can either get 50% plus one vote, which guarantees him the victory, or remain in the “near”, summarizes Thomas Traumann, columnist for the newspaper O Globo and the magazine Veja. debate in Globo are decisive to indicate the tendency of the 4% of Brazilians who are still undecided, according to a recent survey by the IPEC Institute, they are few but in sufficient numbers to vote in favor of Lula , if he has a higher performance, or otherwise extends the dispute until October 30″.
For political scientist Alberto Carlos Almeida, author of A Mão ea Luva, O Que Elege Um Presidente, “the debates don’t change anything”, but, paradoxically, “they are important”. “I’ve already studied the importance of debates, analyzed the polls after them, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, while important as an election ritual, they don’t change anything.”
“It’s just that an election campaign, like a wedding, has rituals,” Almeida continues. “The wedding rites are the church, the attire of the newlyweds, the exchange of rings and the vows of allegiance, in the rites of an election campaign include the debates.” Continuing the analogy, the political scientist recalls that “just as happiness in a marriage union does not depend on those rituals, the election of a president does not depend on debate, it is an important ritual, because people wait for it, but not decisively”.
Maurício Stycer, television columnist at the UOL portal and the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, agrees and analyzes the history of these types of television events. “The debates are important, as they are seen by many people, especially Globo’s, but they are not decisive for that reason.” “This debate is in prime time, right after the soap opera Pantanal, which is in its penultimate week, and the audience by the end of the episode must be above 30 points. [cerca de 21 milhões de telespetadores]But a debate is a long and exhausting event, lasting almost three hours, it will have ups and downs of rating”.
The debate on TV Bandeirantes, without Father Kelmon, as the candidacy had not yet been approved, led the public on August 28. But the one on SBT, broadcast on Saturday the 24th late afternoon, without Lula, came in third, behind competitors Globo and Record. However, according to a survey by the Ipespe Institute, 55% of those polled will follow the Globo debate.
About the possible absence of Bolsonaro, who can promote a live simultaneously on social media, Stycer says the current president will inevitably lose in the ratings. “A viewership point on television is 700,000 people, that is, the 21 million viewers expected, infinitely more people than anyone else. live from the president to today”.
That said, presence in debates was not always a guarantee of election victory. For example, Collor de Mello and Lula won in 1989 and in 2006 without going to a first round; Fernando Henrique Cardoso won straight away in 1998, without going to a debate; and Bolsonaro only went to two in the first and none in 2018. in the second, citing medical problems, and won”.
The first debate on re-democratization took place on July 17, 1989, without two of the main candidates, Collor, the future winner, and Ulysses Guimarães, but with Lula, the second most voted, and eight others. At the time, Paulo Maluf, from the right, called Leonel Brizola, from the left, “unbalanced”. In the response, Brizola called Maluf “the cub of the dictatorship”.
In the second round, Collor and Lula faced each other in a debate famous for the manipulation, in favor of the first and against the second, of the summary in Globo’s Jornal Nacional, as alleged by the PT and the station’s performers at the time. favor of the then trade unionist. In 2015, Globo admitted the mistake and made mea culpa.
In 2006, the candidates called themselves “liars” and “frivolous” in one of the fiercest debates in history — it was Lula and Geraldo Alckmin, now candidates for president and vice president on the same list.
Source: DN
