Brazil's bicentennial celebrations clouded by election race

Brazilians marked 200 years of independence from Portugal on Wednesday, less than a month before the country's general election.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who's campaigning for a second term, has faced accusations of mixing the official Independence Day celebrations with electioneering.

He has urged Brazilians to flood the streets and tens of thousands of his supporters were expected to turn out for rallies in Brasilia, Sao Paulo, and his hometown of Rio de Janeiro in a show of strength.

Speaking in the capital he used his common rhetorical sleight of referring to the left-wing political opposition as evil.

"We know that we face a struggle between good and evil, an evil that lasted for 14 years in our country, that almost broke our country and that now wants to return the scene of the crime," Bolsonaro told a crowd in Brasilia.

He also repeated his criticisms of the Supreme Court, following several disagreements with the institution, prompting boos from some of his supporters carrying banners urging him to remove the court's judges. 

"September 7 will be politicized by definition this year, coming in the home stretch of the campaign," political scientist Paulo Baia of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro told the AFP news agency.

Opinion polls show him trailing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the gap between the two leading candidates has been narrowing.

Guns, planes, and politics

At the first event in Brasilia, the former soldier Bolsonaro briefly appeared with backers before presiding over a military parade, including a 21-gun salute and flyovers by air force planes.

At one stage his supporters at the parade drowned out a piece of military music by chanting, "Our flag will never be red!" — a clear jab at the colors of Lula's left-wing Workers' Party.

Later, Bolsonaro will attend another military display in Rio. That event had been moved from downtown — where independence day parades are usually held — to the Copacabana beach, where his supporters often hold demonstrations.

His backers flooded the avenue along the city's renowned beach.

"Bolsonaro and his supporters have built this up into the most important day of the whole campaign. So he'll have to deliver some kind of red meat," Brian Winter, vice president for policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, told to the Associated Press.

Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, had few public events scheduled for Wednesday but had rallies scheduled for Thursday and a meeting with Evangelicals, a key voting bloc, on Friday.

Lula's lead over Bolsonaro slips

The latest opinion polls still show Lula defeating Bolsonaro by double digits in a likely run-off vote at the end of October.

A Genial/Quaest poll released on Wednesday, however, predicted Lula winning 44% support in the first-round vote against Bolsonaro's 34%, narrowing his lead from 12 points to 10. In an expected run-off, Lula's lead has shortened by two percentage points to a 12-point gap, taking 51% of the votes against Bolsonaro's 39%.

Bolsonaro denounced another poll from leading public opinion institute Datafolha, whose latest shows him trailing Lula 45 percent to 32 percent as "a lie."

Bolsonaro has previously claimed, without evidence, that Brazil's electronic voting system is flawed.

His attacks on the voting system have prompted widespread concern among his opponents that he may reject election results.

Bolsonaro's son Eduardo raised eyebrows on Twitter Monday by calling on Brazilians "who have legally purchased guns" to enlist as "volunteers for Bolsonaro."

Such comments have added to fears of violence around the election if Bolsonaro refuses to accept the result.

Just last week, however, he told supporters to lower a banner demanding a military coup.

And in a TV appeal released Tuesday, he urged people to turn out for the bicentennial celebrations "with peace and harmony."

lo/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)