By Emir Sader

The presidential campaign has entered the anything goes phase for the far right.

Polls, are being used as weapons. Anything goes to keep Lula from winning the runoff. Anything goes to boost jailed ex-President Bolsonaro’s son Flávio.

Even when it comes to issues Lula has nothing to do with, such as the crisis at Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court, his opponents look for pretexts to justify polling results that are completely at odds with reality.

Lula and Flávio Bolsoanro. (Mauro Pimentel and Evaristo Sa: Getty Images)

Fake news is nothing compared with what is already happening and what is still to come. Lula is already being blamed for things he never said. They will stage hoaxes and make up all kinds of stories, with the media turning a blind eye.

What Globo did to help elect Fernando Collor will look like child’s play compared with what is already happening and what the far right will do in coming days.

Channel 4’s 1993 documentary “Beyond Citizen Kane”, showed how TV Globo manipulated the presidential debates to damage the Lula campaign. Globo’s General Manager was fired this week after leaked social media chats exposed him for taking money from jailed bank frauders Daniel Vorcaro to damage the Lula campaign.

Be prepared. What lies ahead will go far beyond anything we can imagine. We must be ready to defend ourselves. Otherwise, the outcome could be devastating for us.

Journalists at Globo itself have discussed the contest between Lula and Collor without even mentioning the network’s own role in manipulating the final debate between the two candidates. That manipulation ultimately proved decisive.

The clash between two political projects is giving way to legal battles, with the right resorting to dirty tricks because it struggles to present viable proposals that can compete with the undeniable success of Lula’s government.

Flávio’s decision to agree to a debate while threatening Lula, only to back down later, is another example. He retreated not only in the face of evidence linking him to Daniel Vorcaro, but also after footage of orgies emerged.

Flávio is still basking in his first round victory, even as new polls clearly point to a shift in the political landscape. The change comes especially in the wake of massive popular demonstrations across Brazil. Although Flávio has said nothing about the scale of these rallies, he has begun changing his position on key issues.

He once dismissed social policies as “populist” measures designed to buy public support. Now he has embraced Bolsa Família and other policies that have long been hallmarks of Lula’s political career. He has also abandoned his radical proposal to privatize nearly all state owned companies. He now explicitly says he will not privatize Petrobras, Caixa Econômica Federal or Banco do Brasil, Brazil’s three most prominent publicly-owned companies.

These concessions are part of the anything goes approach in the final stretch of the campaign. Principles no longer matter. The overriding goal is to win votes in a fiercely contested election.

Emir Sader, 83, is a Lebanese-Brazilian political scientist and sociologist. Among his 35 books, many of which have also been published in Spanish, French and English, is The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left (London and New York: Verso Books, 2011). Sader is former President of the Latin-American Sociological Association and was one of the founding organizers of the World Social Forum.

This article was originally published in Revista Forum, has been translated by Panamerican Dispatch with express consent of the editor-in-chief, and can be read in its original Portuguese here.

Anything Goes in Brazil’s Election