How elderly ‘unsung heroes’ powered Lula’s historic fightback in Brazil
Özet haber: Older voters praised for helping tip balance in leftwing president’s favour against far-right Flávio Bolsonaro in runoff
Older voters praised for helping tip balance in leftwing president’s favour against far-right Flávio Bolsonaro in runoff
It had been nearly a decade since Celia de Oliveira Soares last voted, and months since the 101-year-old great-grandmother last left her home.
But on 25 October, when Brazil held what many considered its most important presidential election in decades, relatives helped Soares into a wheelchair and drove her to a nearby school to make sure the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, did not prevail.
Soares clung to the banister as, step by step, she climbed two flights of stairs to the polling booth under the watchful eye of her granddaughter’s husband, Marcio Marques.
Inside, the frail but jaunty centenarian keyed the number “13” – representing Bolsonaro’s leftwing rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – into an electronic voting machine and pressed confirm.
“I like Lula. I really do!” enthused Soares, a retired bank employee who has lived in Rio de Janeiro most of her life.
“I don’t like Bolsonaro or his father. So the efficient thing to do was go out and vote,” Soares added, as her grandsons, Tito and Ravi, played on the balcony around her surrounded by pot plants and books.
Soares is one of more than 1 million elderly people who, having missed the election’s 4 October first round – which Lula lost – decided to vote in the second.
Never since the return of democracy in the 1980s had the first-round loser bounced back, but Lula did just that. And after Lula’s shock revival, elderly voters have been hailed as the election’s unsung heroes – including by Lula himself.
At his 81st birthday party last week, the leftist veteran shed tears while describing his gratitude to the elderly people who helped him clinch a historic fourth term while clutching walking frames and sticks.
“I honestly think it was the most powerful and human image I’ve ever seen during an election,” Lula said of viral pictures showing voters in their 80s, 90s and 100s being carried into polling centres by relatives or carers, some in stretchers or wheelchairs.
In north-east Brazil, where Lula was born into rural poverty in the 1940s, a 114-year-old retiree called Josefa Pereira da Conceição went to vote wearing a red T-shirt emblazoned with Lula’s face and the slogan “Strength of the people”.
Election experts are still crunching the numbers to fully understand how Lula pulled off his unprecedented fightback, finding 10.3m extra votes between the first and second rounds.
Explanations include a sharp increase in welfare benefits on the eve of the vote; an extraordinary digital mobilisation involving a pro-Lula WhatsApp group that grew from 50,000 to nearly 11m members in less than a month; and a student-led street rebellion in which millions of citizens protested across Brazil.
Some believe elderly people were also crucial, noting how 1.4 million of the 3 million extra voters who took part in the second round after skipping the first were over 70. Pre-election polls suggested such voters were more inclined to vote for Lula.
