Brazil election: Bolsonaro and Lula trade insults in first debate

Many Brazilians gathered to watch this first in a series of debates

Brazil's far-right President, Jair Bolsonaro, and left-wing former leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have taken part in a fiery first television debate ahead of October's general election.

Mr Bolsonaro accused the ex-president of having led the most corrupt government in Brazil's history.

Lula, in turn, said Mr Bolsonaro had destroyed Brazil.

Opinion polls suggest Lula - who served as president from 2003 to 2010 - is ahead in the election race.

But the gap between the two candidates seems to be narrowing.

On Sunday, the two frontrunners appeared on TV in São Paulo along with four other presidential candidates.

Mr Bolsonaro, 67, wasted no time in targeting Lula, 76. "Your government was the most corrupt in Brazilian history," he said.

He also repeatedly called Lula an "ex-convict" in reference to Lula being convicted of corruption and jailed in 2018.

Lula took exception to the label, stressing that his conviction had been overturned by the Supreme Court.

But Mr Bolsonaro did not let up his criticism of the Lula Administration. "It was a kleptocracy, a government based on robbery," he said, referring to Operation Car Wash, a corruption scandal involving Brazil's state-run oil giant Petrobras.

"What do you want to come back to power for? To do the same thing to Petrobras again?" he added.

Lula, in turn, said his government should be remembered for helping to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty and accused President Bolsonaro of trashing that legacy.

He said the current president was "destroying" the country.

Tempers were running even higher among the candidates' teams watching the debate on a screen backstage.

A member of Lula's team accused the Bolsonaro team of "lacking the necessary maturity to attend the debate" after they had jeered and shouted insults while Lula spoke.

Ricardo Salles, a Bolsonaro ally and former environment minister, took umbrage and he and a member of Lula's team almost came to blows.

Meanwhile, supporters of Simone Tebet, the candidate for the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement party, yelled at both men, accusing them of being as bad as each other.

The shouting match only ended when the two men were physically separated.

The first round of the election will be held on 2 October with a second round scheduled for 30 October if none of the candidates gets 50% of valid votes.

You may also be interested in: