Iran press/ America: Far-right candidate Bolsonaro increased his lead by 15 percentage points ahead of first round of voting. His main opponent out of the 12 other candidates in the election is expected to be former São Paulo mayor, Fernando Haddad, representing the leftist Workers’ Party, or PT, which ruled Brazil for 13 years until it was ravaged by a graft scandal, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Once one of the world’s highest flying emerging economies, the two-round election comes as Brazil is trying to emerge from four of the most turbulent years in its recent history, characterised by a severe recession and the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff of the PT.
The 2018 election has also been among Brazil’s most bizarre in recent years. At one point, it was a contest between a candidate who was in jail for corruption — former PT president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and one who was in hospital — Jair Bolsonaro, after he was stabbed while campaigning.
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Investors are hoping that the vote, which will be decided in a second-round run-off between the two leading candidates on October 28 if a clear winner does not emerge from the first round on Sunday 7 October, will produce a president with a mandate to implement economic reforms. Chief among these are fiscal reforms to restructure Brazil’s over-generous pension system.
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