A defeat for Jair Bolsonaro.

The Brazilians went to the polls on Sunday, November 29, for the second round of municipal elections and confirmed the rout of the candidates supported by the far-right president as well as those of the left, giving a clear victory to the center-right.

In the country's two largest cities, São Paulo and Rio, outgoing mayor Bruno Covas and ex-mayor Eduardo Paes, both center-right, were elected into the chair.

In São Paulo, a city of 12.5 million inhabitants and the richest in the country, Bruno Covas, of the PSDB (liberal right), won 59.38% of the vote against 40.62% for the one who carried the hopes of the left, Guilherme Boulos (Psol).

The 40-year-old outgoing mayor fights from his town hall against cancer of the digestive system and has as a mentor the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, probable opponent of Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election of 2022.

"It is possible to practice politics without hate and by telling the truth," said Bruno Covas, apparently to the attention of the far-right president.

Defeat for 11 of 13 candidates from Bolsonaro's far-right

In Rio, Eduardo Paes (Democrats, center-right) was elected with 64.07% of the vote, inflicting a defeat as scathing as announced to the unpopular outgoing mayor Marcelo Crivella (35.93%).

"Rio is the place of diversity", and "we will govern (...) for all beliefs, orientations and religions", launched Eduardo Paes, who was already mayor of Rio from 2008 to 2016, criticizing Marcelo Crivella.

For the latter, a former evangelical pastor, there was no miracle.

He is among the 13 candidates supported by Jair Bolsonaro - 11 of whom were beaten, including Capitão Wagner, on Sunday in Fortaleza (North-East).

"This is the confirmation of a rout of Bolsonarism that we had seen emerge" in the first round of November 15, said AFP Leonardo Avritzer, political analyst at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

These municipalities, which apparently sign the ebb of the wave of extremism that brought Jair Bolsonaro to power in 2018, do not bode well for the head of state, without a party for a year, and two years from the presidential election.

But "that does not mean that it will not ally in 2022 with the parties of the traditional right", estimates Flavia Biroli, political scientist at the University of Brasilia.

Failure of the left

The municipal elections were also a big disappointment for the left.

"The left continues to have enormous difficulties in the South and the South-East," said Leonardo Avritzer of the UFMG.

In Porto Alegre (South), centrist Sebastião Melo won over Manuela d'Avila, a rising 39-year-old figure of the Communist Party of Brazil, allied with the Workers' Party (PT) and unsuccessful candidate for the vice-presidency in 2018 .

For the first time since the return of democracy to Brazil (1985), the PT of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva failed to win a single capital of the 26 states of the federation.

The Workers' Party could not win Recife, in Pernambuco (North-East).

The city is however a bastion of the left and the only capital which was within its reach.

João Campos, 26, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB, center left), grilled politeness to his cousin Marilia Arraes (PT), 36, after a violent family psychodrama.

However, despite his defeat in São Paulo, the qualification of Guilherme Boulos for the second round gave a national dimension to this young man (38 years old), who is the new face of a left under renovation.

Covid-19, recession, unemployment and violence

The ballot was clouded by the coronavirus pandemic which has claimed more than 172,000 lives in Brazil in eight months.

Voters had been encouraged to bring their own pens and had to vote masked, and observing the distancing in the queues.

Some 38 million Brazilians - a quarter of the electorate - had been called upon to elect for four years the mayors and municipal councilors of 57 cities, including 18 of the 26 state capitals.

The largest country in Latin America is seeing a second wave of Covid-19 arriving, after being plunged into recession and recording a record level of unemployment, with 14 million people unemployed.

Brazilian cities are confronted with the lack of means in health - particularly glaring with the pandemic - education, public transport or housing, but also with debt, corruption and violence.

With AFP

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