He voted in Sao Paulo, accompanied by his wife and political allies.
On Sunday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he was “confident” of winning the general election as he voted at a school on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.
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Lula voted at around 9:15 a.m. local time at the Joao Firmino Correia de Araujo state school in the municipality of São Bernardo do Campo, amid cheers from a crowd of supporters who had been waiting for the president’s arrival since early morning.
“I am very confident, not only because of the government we have carried out, but also because of the work we did during the campaign. I am sure that we will have a very high turnout, and I am sure that we are going to win this election,” Lula told reporters as he left the school.
The Workers’ Party leader also said they have accomplished a great deal but that there is still “a lot to do” in Brazil. “It is 500 years of backwardness. You cannot solve 500 years in 10, 15 or 20 years. We need a lot of time to fix this country,” he pointed out.
Dressed in a white shirt and his characteristic Panama hat, he arrived accompanied by his wife, Rosangela Lula da Silva. Inside the school, he posed with some of his main allies, including vice presidential candidate Geraldo Alckmin, Sao Paulo state gubernatorial candidate Fernando Haddad, and Senate candidates Marina Silva and Simone Tebet.
On Sunday, polling stations across Brazil opened for general elections in which President Lula da Silva is seeking reelection against his main rival, far-right Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro.
In this election, which opened at 8 a.m. local time and will close at 5 p.m., about 158.7 million citizens are called upon to elect a president, vice president, 27 governors, all 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, two-thirds of the Senate and representatives to the regional legislative assemblies.
The Brazilian General Election in Figures
According to data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the districts with the largest numbers of voters are located in Sao Paulo (34 million), Minas Gerais (16 million), Rio de Janeiro (13 million), and Bahia (11 million).
Citizens will be able to cast ballots on half a million electronic voting machines distributed across 92,000 polling places in the 5,570 municipalities throughout the country.
Nearly 919,000 people registered to participate in the election from outside Brazil, a 32% increase compared with the 2022 presidential election.
Once polling stations close throughout the country, authorities will have the first official results within a few hours, thanks to the electronic voting system Brazil has used for 30 years.
If none of the presidential candidates receives more than half of the valid votes, the two candidates who receive the most votes will face each other in a second round scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 25.
The two leading presidential candidates remain technically tied in the country’s main polls. A Datafolha poll released Saturday night gives Lula 45% and Bolsonaro 42% of the vote in Sunday’s election.
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.