Brazil’s leftist Haddad must remake his candidacy

SAO PAULO: Brazil’s leftist presidential hopeful Fernando Haddad will have to pull off an extreme feat of political acrobatics if he wants to reverse a first-round beating at the hands of a far-right rival.

To have a chance of winning the Oct 28 runoff against Jair Bolsonaro, Haddad would need to move hard to the center, distance himself from his political mentor and denounce the corruption that flourished during his party’s 2003-2016 run in government, political analysts said.

A 55-year-old former mayor of Sao Paulo, Haddad became the Workers Party (PT) candidate just one month ago, after former president and PT founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was barred from running because of a corruption conviction.

Lula, a former union leader and longtime darling of the left, is serving 12 years in prison and faces five more trials.

From his jail cell, the charismatic Lula - who led the presidential race until he was jailed - handpicked Haddad as his replacement. Lula remains a hero for many poorer Brazilian for his efforts to reduce poverty during his two terms in office from 2003 to 2010, but he is also a divisive figure.

In campaigning so far, the PT’s slogan has literally been "Haddad is Lula. Lula is Haddad." That message was necessary to maintain support from the party’s left-wing factions, which have not fully embraced Haddad’s centrist politics and academic background.

But that pitch will not be enough to beat Bolsonaro, who holds a commanding lead and momentum. The former Army captain and veteran lawmaker beat recent opinion polls to take 46 percent of votes in Sunday’s first-round election, compared to Haddad’s 29 percent.

"Haddad has to pivot or perish," said Sergio PraÃ'a, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a leading university. "He also must drop the talk that Lula is a political prisoner. He is not going to win with that line.

"Bolsonaro’s popularity has surged despite his praise for Brazil’s 1964-1985 dictatorship - which has stirred fears he would militarize government in Latin America’s largest nation. Bolsonaro has also been charged with hate speech over his tirades against gays, black Brazilians and women.

He has dismissed the federal charges as a political attack. With their show of support on Sunday, Bolsonaro’s voters declared that, like the Americans who back US President Donald Trump, they do not mind his incendiary rhetoric.

In fact, that is much of his appeal. They want him to bludgeon the political establishment, destroying a system that has refused to reform itself. In a Sunday night speech, Haddad talked of unifying the country around democratic principles.

He thanked Lula for his support and said he would visit him in prison on Monday. He denounced Bolsonaro as representing a return to Brazil’s dark authoritarian days. But not once did he utter the word "corruption."

"Haddad has to tell the Brazilian people that the PT made serious errors, which he did not do in first-round campaigning," said Carlos Melo, a political scientist with Insper, a Sao Paulo business school. "He has no momentum and he will have to work tirelessly to explain why people should vote for him and put the PT back in power."