SAO PAULO, (Reuters) – Brazil’s main presidential candidates took their gloves off yesterday and laid into each other in the first presidential debate for the October general election with accusations of corruption and threats to democracy.
Incumbent far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been heavily criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis and attacks on Brazil’s voting system, is running against former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who left office with record popularity but was convicted of bribery in 2017.
Bolsonaro said his leftist challenger led Brazil’s most corrupt government ever, citing the scandal over overpriced contracts with state-run oil company Petrobras PETR4.SA.
“Why do you want to return to power? To continue doing the same thing at Petrobras?” Bolsonaro said in the debate between six candidates on Band TV.
Lula, the front-runner in the race who was president from 2003 to 2010, said his government should be remembered for doing the most to reduce poverty.
“The country I left is a country that people miss, it’s the country of employment, where people had the right to live with dignity, with their heads held high,” Lula said. “This is the country that the current president is destroying”.
Lula led Brazil during years of fast economic growth, but was convicted of bribery and jailed for 19 months until his convictions were annulled.
Opinion polls say Lula has a double-digit advantage over Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly attacked Brazil’s electronic voting system, raising fears that he could contest the result if defeated.
Some of the harshest criticism Bolsonaro faced in the debate came from two women among the six candidates.
“We have a president who threatens democracy. We need to change the president,” said Senator Simone Tebet, running for the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement party when asked how to resolve the current conflict between the Bolsonaro government and the judiciary.
Bolsonaro accused the judiciary of overstepping its bounds when it authorized a police operation targeting several businessmen who backed his re-election after a media report accused them of discussing on social media a coup d’etat if Bolsonaro lost.
Tebet accused Bolsonaro of delaying the purchase of vaccines and spreading fake news about COVID-19, and said she was intimidated by some of his ministers during a Senate investigation into the government response to the virus.
“I am not afraid of you,” she said, pointing her finger at the president.
Bolsonaro denied he was against woman’s rights and said Brazilian women love him because he defends the family and opposes legalizing drugs.
During the debate, however, he attacked female journalist Vera Magalhaes for criticizing him: “You sleep thinking about me … You are a disgrace to journalism.”
a two-hour drive from the plant, and the town of Orikhiv further east.
On Saturday, Starukh told Ukrainian television that residents were being taught how to use iodine in case of a radiation leak.
Ukraine’s military reported shelling of nine more towns in the area on the opposite side of the Dnipro river from the plant in its daily report, while the Russian RIA news agency quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying its air force struck a Motor Sich MSICH.UAX plant in the region where helicopters were repaired.
Russian authorities said they had downed a Ukrainian drone which planned to attack the nuclear-waste storage facility at the plant, according to RIA.
Reuters could not verify those reports.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said nine shells fired by the Ukrainian artillery in two separate attacks landed in the nuclear plant’s grounds.
“At present, full-time technical personnel are monitoring the technical condition of the nuclear plant and ensuring its operation. The radiation situation in the area of the nuclear power plant remains normal,” he said in a statement.
The United Nations and Kyiv have called for a withdrawal of military equipment and personnel from the plant to ensure it is not a target.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Russian forces had turned the plant into a military base, putting the whole continent at risk, and had no business being there.
“Russian military must get out of the plant,” he said on Twitter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is waiting for clearance for its officials to visit the plant, which the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday should be “very, very close”.
Two of the plant’s reactors were cut off from the electrical grid last week due to shelling. On Ukraine’s eastern front, Ukrainian forces halted the latest Russian attempt to advance on the city of Sloviansk in Donetsk province, Kyiv’s military said in its daily report.
Ukrainian troops also repelled Russian attempts to attack in three directions, including in the area of Bakhmut and the coal-producing town of Avdiivka, it added in an afternoon update.
Having taken Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk weeks ago, Moscow’s forces have focused on Bakhmut in their push to extend control over the Donbas region. According to regional governors, Sloviansk and the city of Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk province, were shelled by Russian forces overnight, but there were no reports of new casualties.
Reuters could not verify those accounts.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy noted that both the Donbas region and the city of Donetsk in the past had celebrated annual holidays in the last weekend of August. “Ukraine will never forget anything,” he said in his nightly video address.
President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Russia’s neighbour on Feb. 24, saying a “special operation” was needed to demilitarise the country and remove perceived security threats to Russia.
Ukraine and the West have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for an imperialist war of conquest that has killed thousands, displaced millions, turned cities to rubble and threatened the global economy with an energy and food supply crisis, sending prices soaring.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Kuleba would travel to Sweden on Monday followed by a trip to the Czech Republic on Tuesday as part of Kyiv’s efforts to cement international support for Ukraine and push for more sanctions pressure on Russia.
