mseap

NEWS

Board View
SUBJECT Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro wins Brazil’s presidential election
DATE 2018-10-29
DOWNLOAD

 

Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the second and final round of presidential elections. According to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Bosonaro was declared the winner after 94 percent of the votes were counted.

 

Bolsonaro’s victory against the leftist opponent Fernando Haddid, a former Sao-Paulo mayor and the son of a family of Lebanese immigrants, concludes one of the most polarizing and violent political campaign in the country’s history.

 

Sunday’s election result signals a political shift for the South America’s largest economy.

 

Jair Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former army captain, is a conservative candidate from the Social Liberal Party. During the election campaigns, his provocative statements on various topics, from abortion to homosexuality and migration, earned him the nickname “Trump of the Tropics”.

 

In his victory speech on Sunday, Bolsonaro called himself “a defender of freedom,” promising to “lead a government which upholds and protects the rights of the citizens who follow their duties and respect the laws.”

 

His speech reiterated Bolsonaro’s election pledges, in which he portrayed himself as a hardliner who will restore safety to Brazil’s streets, indicating the new government will strive to relax laws restricting ownership and possession of guns. To revive Brazilian economy, Bolsonaro proposed to reduce state intervention and to decrease government “waste”.

 

The president-elect also said he would “cleanse” Brazil of corrupt politicians, as well as to withdraw Brazil from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

 

BY MSEAP Cyber Secretariat (mseap@assembly.go.kr)