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‘Make it stop!’ Brazilians fed up with long, dirty election campaign

Photo: Douglas Magno / AFP

| By AFP | Anna Pelegri, Ramon Sahmkow, with Lujan Scarpinelli in Sao Paulo and Louis Genot in Rio de Janeiro |

Marcelo feels it is making him sick. Alexia has stopped chatting to her neighbors and Luciene is desperate for it to end: Brazil’s lengthy and nasty election duel has left many voters fed up.

Latin America’s largest nation is four days from deciding whether to re-elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro or leftist former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is leading a very tight race.

The two men, both tarnished but with fervent supporters, are locked in a fierce battle for the four percent of voters who plan to spoil their vote and the one percent who remain undecided.

The candidates have flooded the media and social media with their presence, and the election has dominated conversation for months.

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“I am getting sick because there is a lot of disagreement,” said 51-year-old Marcelo Brandao Viana, a Bolsonaro supporter who laments a campaign “overloaded” with “fake news” and attacks between the rival parties.

“I am living this 24 hours a day, and it is horrible,” the bank receptionist told AFP. Nevertheless, he cannot resist looking at his WhatsApp groups during his lunch break outside a mall in the capital Brasilia.

Meanwhile, on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, 65-year-old Jose Guilherme Araujo sits on a beach chair in a tight, bright green swimsuit bearing the Brazilian flag as he tries to escape the electoral noise.

“I feel exhausted. I am fed up,” the lawyer told AFP, adding he plans to spoil his ballot.

“The main television channels are only talking about the election. It is horrible. I try to watch cable to escape the subject.”

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Don’t talk about politics

A final showdown between Bolsonaro and Lula had been on the cards since last year when the leftist former president had longstanding corruption charges overturned for procedural reasons, and was freed from prison, without being exonerated.

Many Brazilians feel the election campaign began then, long before voting season, especially because both candidates draw strong measures of adoration and hatred.

In Sao Paulo, Alexia Ebert put her apartment building WhatsApp group on mute after it became an endless thread of political information and disinformation.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” said the 22-year-old student.

Some, like Aline Tescer, a 35-year-old from Sao Paulo, said that any policy proposals for the next four years are conspicuous by their absence.

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“I see myself the same as in the last election. It is always the same things, the same accusations, and I feel I have no choice in who to vote for.”

Luciene Soares, a businesswoman from Brasilia, feels “disappointed” by the “disrespect” instigated by Bolsonaro.

“People are afraid. I prefer not to say who I am voting for because one is afraid of people’s reactions. I don’t talk about politics because it creates problems,” said the 48-year-old.

“Among friends and family, we say: ‘God! Make it stop.’”

Anesthetised electorate

This fatigue has not shown up in weekly election polls, but experts have picked it up on the streets and online, in this country which has 171.5 million users (80 percent of the population) on social media, according to a study carried out by the Hootsuite and We Are Social agencies.

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The constant bombardment of information “ends up anaesthetizing the electorate” and “tiring them out”, said Amaro Grassi, a sociologist with the Getulio Vargas thinktank.

“The permanent presence of campaign content is not new in this election, but has become much more accentuated,” he added.

Grassi remarks that most Brazilians just want to get back to their normal lives and “turn the page” on the bruising campaign.

“Today, politics has even become a topic of conversation on gossip sites,” said Sao Paulo resident Iamylle Kauane, on a visit to Rio.

This 21-year-old social assistant is waiting for the elections to end “to return to normalcy.”

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Nevertheless, some are indefatigable.

“I don’t feel tired,” said Leandro Albino Oliveira, 36, selling hats on a Rio beach.

“We will not rest until our president is re-elected.”

They have been an advocate for the rights of non-binary people since high school, and paid for a qualification in social work by selling sex.

Today, Cienfuegos is a senior figure at the Organizando Trans Diversidades (Organizing Trans Diversities) advocacy group.

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Over the past decade, Chile has been moving away from the conservatism inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and the influence of the Catholic Church. 

Still, last year, 1,114 complaints of discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons were registered in Chile — 127 from transgender people — according to the Movilh gender activist group.

In 2012, Congress passed the Anti-Discrimination Act, and three years later legalized same-sex civil unions.

In 2018, a law was passed that allows for a sex change from the age of 14, and last year, Chile approved gay marriage and adoption.

In July, an appeals court in Santiago finally recognized Cienfuegos’ non-binary gender.

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But the fight is not over.

Chile still does not legally recognize genders other than male or female and anyone else who would want an “X” on their ID will likely face a legal battle similar to Cienfuegos’.

“The non-binary identity card is a milestone among a range of milestones for the advancement of fundamental rights,” Cienfuegos said.

“But conservatism is about enduring daily discrimination against… sexual diversity,” they added.

In July last year, Chile’s neighbor Argentina became the first country in Latin America to allow a gender other than male or female to be listed on a person’s identity document, following in the footsteps of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States among other countries.

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Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.

“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.

“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.

Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.

Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”

The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.

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Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan

Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.

The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).

The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”

This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.

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Noboa once again entrusts the Vice President of Ecuador to the vice president he appointed by decree

The President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, returned this Thursday to delegate – for the second time – the Presidency to the Secretary of Public Administration and Cabinet of the Presidency Cynthia Gellibert, whom he himself appointed by decree vice president in charge, in the face of the open confrontation he maintains with the vice president, Verónica Abad.

As he did last week, Noboa again issued a decree in which he announces that he is absent from the Presidency from Thursday to Sunday, to make an electoral campaign in search of his re-election in the elections of February 9, and during that period of time it will be Gellibert who will be in charge of the head of the State.

This action of the president of Ecuador is a matter of evaluation by the ordinary and constitutional justice at the request of the vice president, Verónica Abad, who claims to assume the presidential functions during the full period of the electoral campaign, in which according to the Constitution the head of state must ask for leave for being a candidate for re-election.

In his decree, Noboa argues that, although the Constitution determines that the Vice Presidency must assume the head of State in the event of the absence of the president, this “is not limited to the elected vice-president, but to the person who to date is exercising the functions of the Vice Presidency.”

Before appointing Gellibert as vice president in charge by decree, Noboa sent Abad to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Turkey, after a judge annulled the five-month suspension that the same Government had imposed on him. Until now, the vice president remains in Ecuador to claim to be the one who temporarily assumes the Presidency.

The new period of Gellibert with presidential powers began at 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) this Thursday and is scheduled to end at 22:00 (03:00 GMT) next Sunday, time at which the debate between presidential candidates is expected to end where Noboa is summoned to participate.

After the debate, Noboa plans to travel to Washington to attend Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, according to the Ecuadorian Presidency.

After the first assignment of the Presidency to Gellibert, Abad denounced a “coup d’état” and urged the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply the Democratic Charter, considering that the constitutional order had been broken because it had not received the presidential powers, as contemplated in the Ecuadorian Constitution.

In addition, he filed a protection action with which he seeks that the Justice annul the decrees in which Noboa appointed Gellibert as vice president in charge and delegated the Presidency to him. A court admitted the appeal on Friday, but did not accept some precautionary measures that Abad also asked for to suspend those effects immediately.

Controversies like this will be part of the analysis and evaluation of the electoral observation mission (EOM) of the European Union (EU) for the Ecuadorian elections, as anticipated on Wednesday by its leader, Spanish MEP Gabriel Mato.

The confrontation between Noboa and Abad began in the electoral campaign for the second round of elections for the extraordinary elections of 2023, and was reflected when he assumed the charges, when in one of his first decisions, the president sent the vice president to Israel as ambassador, with the mission of seeking peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Abad has denounced Noboa for alleged political gender violence and has accused her of leading a harassment against her to force her to resign and thus avoid having to delegate the Presidency to her during the electoral campaign period, which runs from January 5 to February 6.

The titular vice president has also accused the Government of being behind the corruption investigation in the offices of the Vice Presidency that involves her son in a case where the Prosecutor’s Office also sought to indict Abad, but the National Assembly (Parliament) voted mostly against lifting the jurisdiction, although the ruling party voted in favor.

The general elections in Ecuador are called for Sunday, February 9 and, according to the polls published so far, Noboa and the candidate of the correismo Luisa González appear as prominent favorites to move on to the second round.

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