The second round of the Brazilian municipal elections, which took place this Sunday in the 57 main cities where no one obtained more than 50% of the votes in the first round, confirmed the double defeat of the allies of President Jair Bolsonaro, but also of the candidates of the Workers Party (PT ), by ex-presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. In the opposite direction, there were triumphs of the traditional center-right and other left parties.
In the two largest Brazilian cities, there was no turnaround in relation to the results of the first round, with the center-right candidates prevailing, who had fallen short of the absolute majority. In São Paulo, Bruno Covas, of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), was re-elected mayor, with 59.4%, defeating Guilherme Boulos, of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), who obtained 40.6% and consolidated his statute. new figure to take into account on the Brazilian left. And in Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, from the Democrats, returned to the position he held between 2009 and 2017 by “crushing” with 64.1% of the votes the current Bolsonarista mayor Marcelo Crivella, of the Republicans, an ultraconservative politician who was once bishop of the Church Universal Kingdom of God. Others of the current president’s rare allies who qualified for the second round were defeated, but by left-wing opponents, in Fortaleza (Ceará) and Belém (Pará).
Among many failures of the PT candidates, who lost the second round in state capitals like Recife (Pernambuco), where João Campos, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), went ahead of his cousin Marília Arraes, or in Vitória (Espírito Santo), a city known for its high degree of criminality, which preferred Delegate Pazolini, from the Republicans, to João Coser, the heaviest one was not even affiliated to the party founded by Lula da Silva. Manuela d’Ávila, of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), who two years ago was the candidate for vice-president of the “PT” Fernando Haddad, failed to win the city hall of Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul), getting nine points percentages behind Sebastião Melo, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).
Known for being the party that manages to participate in all majorities that have governed Brazil since the end of the dictatorship, the centrist and pragmatic MDB returned to have the highest number of victories in the municipalities (including 774 in the first round) and even elected him as mayor. from Goiânia (Goiás) a candidate who is admitted to a hospital in São Paulo due to Covid-19. Former governor Maguito Vilela, 71, is linked to a fan and undergoing hemodialysis, which did not stop him from overcoming Senator Vanderlan Cardoso, of the Social Democratic Party (PSD).
In the first municipal elections in which the PT was unable to win in any state capital, and in which Bolsonarism was shattered, the victories of the Democrats’ center-right stood out – which, besides Rio de Janeiro, guaranteed the prefectures of Curitiba (Paraná) ), Florianópolis (Santa Catarina) and Salvador (Bahia) – and the PSDB, with the triumph of Bruno Covas in São Paulo constituting a lever for the presidential candidacy in 2022 of João Doria, former mayor of the largest city in Brazil, and current governor of that state.
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