The former president and candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, voted in São Bernardo do Campo and said that the people will decide today, in the presidential elections that can define their return to power, the model of Brazil they want.
“Today is possibly the most important day of October in my life and I think it is a very important day for the Brazilian people, because today the people will define the model of Brazil that they want, the model of life that they want,” he said. journalists after voting with the vice-presidential candidate, Geraldo Alckmin, the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate for governor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, and the elected federal deputy Marina Silva.
The PT candidate arrived at his polling station around 9:00 local time (around 12:00 noon in Lisbon) in São Bernardo do Campo and, after voting, kissed the receipt, repeating the gesture of the first round of the elections.
Lula da Silva is facing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is seeking reelection, in one of the most tense electoral campaigns in the country’s history since redemocratization.
The former president showed confidence and delivered a peace-making speech as he spoke, expressing his faith that voters will choose a project that defends democracy.
“People will return to live with citizenship and all the decency that citizenship should have (…) I ask God that it be a day of peace, a day of peace so that people vote with peace of mind and in the end we hope that we can respect the end result,” he said.
Bolsonaro, an opponent of the PT, voted earlier, in Vila Militar do Rio de Janeiro, punctually at 8:00 a.m. (11:00 a.m. in Lisbon), at the beginning of the vote.
In the first round of the elections held on October 2, Lula da Silva won with 48.4% of the vote and Jair Bolsonaro finished with 43.2%.
At stake in these elections are two antagonistic personalities who divided the country in two in a polarization never before seen in Brazilian society.
The more than 156 million voters will be able to vote until 5:00 p.m. in Brasilia (8:00 p.m. in Lisbon) in the more than 570,000 electronic voting machines distributed in 5,570 cities in the country.
Source: TSF
