SAO PAULO - Brazil's
presidential race was thrown into chaos on Friday with the
far-right front-runner in serious but stable condition after
being stabbed at a rally one month before the vote.
Congressman Jair Bolsonaro was knifed in the stomach while
being carried atop supporters' shoulders in a street rally on
Thursday and was being treated at a Sao Paulo hospital.
The attack further clouds Brazil's most unpredictable
election in three decades. Corruption investigations have jailed
scores of powerful businessmen and politicians in recent years,
and alienated infuriated voters.
Bolsonaro, 63, has for years angered many Brazilians with
extreme statements, but is also seen by his many supporters as a
politically incorrect gust of fresh air in a rotten system.
He has repeatedly said the country's notoriously violent
police should increase their killing of suspected drug gang
members and armed criminals. That plays well with wealthier
voters, but is terrifying for the one-third of Brazilians who
tell pollsters they are as afraid of police as criminals.
Surveys consistently give Bolsonaro around 22% in
simulated first-round votes. However, those polls find he would
badly lose to most rivals in the likely event of a runoff, which
takes place if no candidate wins a majority in the first ballot.
ELECTION BOOST?
Some Bolsonaro backers and analysts, especially in financial
markets, forecast the attack could give Bolsonaro a huge boost.
They argue is will draw in some of the 28% of voters who
say they are undecided or will not vote for anyone.
"I just want to send a message to the thugs who tried to
ruin the life of a family man, a guy who is the hope for
millions of Brazilians: You just elected him president. He will
win in the first round," Flavio Bolsonaro, the candidate's son,
said on Friday, echoing sentiment many spread across social
media.
Carlos Melo, a political scientist with Insper, a Sao Paulo
business school, said Bolsonaro may gain some votes. But he
doubted there would be a big shift his way, especially given
that 44% of those surveyed in the latest Ibope poll say
they would never cast a ballot for Bolsonaro, the stiffest
rejection for any candidate.
"I see no reason why voters who have previously said they
reject him would now automatically support him," Melo said.
The political scientist thinks that once the commotion of
the attack passes, voters may soberly think about the roots of
the political polarization and aggressive rhetoric that has
engulfed Brazil.
"Jair Bolsonaro is a symbol of that process," Melo said.
"Voters may be awakened to the thought that politicians who
propose loosening gun laws, for example, end up giving unbridled
power to crazy people, like the man who carried out the attack
yesterday."
LITTLE TIME
Bolsonaro was stabbed while being carried on someone's
shoulders in a crowd of cheering supporters in the city of Juiz
de Fora.
TV pictures showed him screaming in pain, then falling
backward into the arms of those around him.
Police video taken at a precinct showed suspect Adelio Bispo
de Oliveira telling police he had been ordered by God to carry
out the attack.
Speaking earlier in an online video from hospital in Juiz de
Fora, Bolsonaro said the pain of the attack at first was like
being hit by a soccer ball.
"It was intolerable and it seemed like maybe something worse
was happening," he said, talking in a weak, raspy voice with a
tube in his nose and monitors beeping nearby. "I was preparing
for this sort of thing. You run risks."
Bolsonaro was stabilized and in the intensive care unit at
the Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo on Friday.
Dr. Luiz Henrique Borsato, who operated on the candidate,
said the internal wounds were "grave" and "put the patient's
life at risk" but that he was stable. Doctors were worried about
an infection since Bolsonaro's intestines were perforated.
Bolsonaro likely needs to spend at least a week in the
hospital and would be unable to campaign for at least three
weeks - or just before the Oct. 7 first-round vote.
That could seriously damage his run.
Bolsonaro's tiny coalition has almost no campaign time on
government-regulated candidate commercial blocs on television
and radio. He must rely on social media and raucous rallies
around the country to drum up support, events he is now unlikely
to attend for some weeks.
Running as the law-and-order candidate, Bolsonaro has
positioned himself as the anti-politician, though he has spent
nearly three decades in Congress.
He has long espoused taking a radical stance on public
security in Brazil, which has more homicides than any other
country, according to U.N. statistics, and has openly praised
Brazil's military dictatorship, which he has said should have
killed more people.
Bolsonaro faces trial before the Supreme Court for speech
that prosecutors said incited hate and rape. He has called the
charges politically motivated.
His stabbing is the latest instance of political violence,
which is particularly rampant at the local level. Earlier this
year, Marielle Franco, a Rio city councilwoman who was an
outspoken critic of police violence against slum residents, was
assassinated.
One supporter camped outside Bolsonaro's hospital room,
Bruno Engler, 21, who is running for a Minas Gerais state
congressional seat on Bolsonaro's Social Liberal Party, said if
he could, he would lynch the suspect.
"They call us on the right the intolerant, the violent ones,
but those who are intolerant and violent are them," Engler said,
referring to leftist voters.