Fear of violence and an attack against Lula hangs over the electoral campaign in Brazil

Relatives of Marcelo Arruda, a supporter of Lula da Silva assassinated by a Bolsonarista, cry in front of his coffin, on July 10. STRINGER (REUTERS)

With less than three months to go before the presidential elections in Brazil, the atmosphere is starting to heat up.

The murder, last week, of a leader of the Workers' Party (PT) at the hands of a Bolsonarist set off all the alarms.

The opposition appealed to the Prosecutor's Office and the Superior Electoral Court, the court that organizes the elections, so that urgent measures are taken so that there is peace between now and October.

The murder of PT treasurer Marcelo Arruda was not an isolated incident.

The incidents are piling up and although there are few in his party who openly recognize him for fear of sounding alarmist, the fear for the physical integrity of former president Lula da Silva is a fact.

“It is a permanent concern,” confesses deputy Alexandre Padilha, one of those closest to the left-wing candidate, who attributes the increase in political violence to Bolsonaro's speech and his followers.

That fear has also mobilized a Supreme Court judge, the highest judicial body in the country.

Alexandre de Moraes demanded on Friday from the president a statement on a lawsuit that accuses him of encouraging "hate speech" and he counterattacked calling the magistrate a "coward."

A little over a week ago, Lula, the clear favorite in all the polls, attended an event in downtown Rio de Janeiro attended by thousands of people.

He took the stage in a white shirt that covered a bulletproof vest.

Those who came to listen to him closely were surprised by the strong security scheme, never seen to date: the square was surrounded by fences more than two meters high and all attendees were searched one by one.

Even so, a man threw a homemade bomb a few meters from the stage where Lula would go up minutes later.

Upon exploding, he gave off a strong odor of feces.

There were no injuries and the suspect was quickly apprehended, but he left many worried faces.

These types of attacks have been happening.

In early June, at an event in the city of Uberlândia,

a drone dropped a foul-smelling liquid on Lula supporters.

Previously, Bolsonarista militants surrounded the vehicle in which the former president was traveling in the city of Campinas and there were threats before a visit to the State of Paraná.

“Brazil changed, and I still don't know why Brazil changed so much, but they are trying to turn electoral campaigns into a war.

They are trying to instill fear in Brazilian society”, Lula himself lamented this week in another act in Brasilia, this time from the most controlled stage of a congress palace.

At the end of last year, the former president left the apartment where he lived for a good part of his life in São Bernardo do Campo, on the outskirts of São Paulo, and moved to another in the São Paulo capital.

"It was done because that way the security agents that accompany him can be with him 24 hours a day," explains Padilha.

The leader of the PT, as a former president and also an electoral candidate, has the right to have an escort from the State, which according to the local press is made up of more than 30 agents.

in the

of risk that the Federal Police established on the candidates, which goes from 1 to 5, Lula is at the highest level.

Despite fears of an attack, the PT assures that the campaign will continue as normal and that Lula will remain faithful to his style, in close combat with his followers: a headache for his security team, which fears more than never what can happen in those mass bathrooms.

This week, the Federal Police sent a circular to the state forces asking them to increase the security of the presidential candidates during their tours of the country, taking into account "the incidents already registered in the electoral pre-campaign."

So far this year, there have been 214 episodes of political violence and 40 murders, according to a study by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

It is 23% more than in the first half of 2020,

In addition to the increase in cases, the concern is also given by the memory of what happened shortly before the 2018 elections, when then-candidate Bolsonaro suffered a stab wound to the abdomen that almost killed him.

The police investigation concluded that the attacker suffered from psychiatric disorders and that he acted alone, but the now president often uses that episode to ridicule the "violence of good" that, in his opinion, is propagated by the left.

In that electoral campaign, Bolsonaro wielded a tripod as if it were a rifle and between laughs promised to "shoot the entire

in reference to the followers of the PT.

No other candidate used such serious terms in all this time.

Violent rhetoric continued to be the trend in these four years of government.

In April of this year, the Bolsonaro deputy Otoni de Paula threatened to receive "with bullets" the PT militants who went to protest at his house, after Lula suggested to the unionists that they carry out escraches to the parliamentarians loyal to Bolsonaro.

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