Brazil’s President and the Son of His Jailed Rival Trade Insults on Live TV: “Brazil is going to retire you”

They would not even stand close to each other. On a Band TV stage in São Paulo on Sunday night, Oct. 18, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80 years old and chasing a fourth term, kept his distance from Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro — and Flávio told the country the space between them was about protecting his wallet.

It was the first runoff debate of Brazil’s presidential election, and it played like a family feud staged for a nation. Flávio is the son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro, and he won the first round 47% to 45%. He leads the runoff polling by roughly 51 to 49 ahead of the Oct. 25 vote, with a second debate set for Oct. 23.

The two men repeatedly called each other liars, as reported by AP, and the insults, in AP’s translation, were not subtle. Lula called Flávio, as reported by AP, a habitual liar, a thug, and a militiaman.

Flávio returned the fire and turned even the staging into a punchline. Asked, in effect, about the noticeable physical distance the candidates kept on stage, he joked it was deliberate — because my wallet could be stolen, as reported by AP.

A Dynasty, a Comeback and One Line About Retirement

The sharpest line of the night was also Flávio’s simplest. Brazil is going to retire you, he told Lula, as reported by AP — a direct shot at an 80-year-old president asking voters for four more years, delivered by the son of the man Lula defeated and replaced.

There was one moment of concession in all the fighting. Pressed on his father’s COVID record, Flávio said, I’ll offer a mea culpa here, in AP’s translation — a rare admission in a debate otherwise built on attack, and one his opponents quickly treated as its own headline.

Coverage in AP and Al Jazeera’s account of the fiery debate and in The Times’ reporting on the race, its voters and its polls both underline how tight the runoff remains, with neither camp able to coast into Sunday.

The night ended with a scare that turned out to be nothing. A bomb scare around Flávio’s car after the debate was ruled a false alarm on Oct. 19, a tense footnote to an already tense evening.

Viewers couldn’t agree on what São Paulo had watched. Lula’s camp said the debate exposed a dynasty trying to inherit power it could not win on its own record. Flávio’s camp said it proved Lula’s governments are “always marked by corruption” — and that Brazil is ready to retire him.