Brazil Runoff Puts Work and State Power in Focus

Brazil’s Oct. 25 presidential runoff is a statistical tie. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has pledged changes to presidential terms, government ministries and cabinet appointments, proposals that would require Congress to act. The plans put constitutional rules and the size of the federal government before voters alongside wages, social programmes and working hours.

A Datafolha poll released Thursday night gave Bolsonaro 51% of valid votes and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 49%, within a margin of error of two percentage points. A week earlier, the same poll showed Bolsonaro at 52% and Lula at 48%. A Quaest poll published Wednesday put Bolsonaro at 46% of voting intentions and Lula at 44%, also within the margin of error. Nine percent said they’d cast a blank or spoiled ballot, while 1% were undecided.

The vote and the constitutional question

Rejection rates were close. Fifty-four percent said they’d never vote for Bolsonaro, and 53% said the same of Lula. Asked whether they feared Lula’s reelection or the Bolsonaro family’s return to power more, respondents split evenly at 43%. Lula led in the northeast and among Bolsa Família recipients; Bolsonaro led in the south and among evangelicals.

Bolsonaro won 47.03% of the first-round vote against Lula’s 45.16%. He has secured backing from almost all right-wing and centre-right parties and promised to maintain the current government’s social programmes and create a Ministry of Prosperity. The candidates were scheduled to meet Sunday for their first debate, on the Band network.

In a TV Globo interview on Friday, Oct. 16, Flávio Bolsonaro said he’d give up a second term if Congress didn’t pass his proposal to end presidential reelection. He said he’d submit a constitutional amendment, known as a PEC, to end reelection and bar relatives up to the third degree from succeeding him. “The details will come in the legislative process; I only need one term,” he said, according to CNN Brasil.

The proposed family restriction isn’t current law. It would also prevent his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, from running in 2030; siblings, grandparents and uncles fall within the specified degree of relation. Flávio said Congress would determine the length of a single term. Veja reported that discussion could include extending a term from four years to five or six.

Every president elected since 2002—Lula, Dilma Rousseff and Jair Bolsonaro—has sought a second term, Veja noted. The reelection amendment passed under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. A constitutional amendment requires three-fifths support in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, in two rounds of voting in each chamber. Congress still must approve the proposal, and the length of any single term remains unresolved.

Ministries, wages and working hours

Flávio also pledged to cut at least 10 federal ministries from a government he said has 39. He said he wanted to balance public accounts without harming people most in need of government assistance. Asked whether he’d keep minimum-wage increases above inflation, he answered, “Yes,” Poder360 reported. He said he wouldn’t unlink pensions from the minimum wage and didn’t intend to change the Constitution to remove minimum spending levels for health and education, O Tempo reported.

He said he’d keep the end of the 6×1 work schedule, under which many employees work six days and rest one. Congress promulgated the constitutional amendment on Friday, Oct. 16. Flávio initially opposed it, then voted remotely in favour on Wednesday, Oct. 14. He told TV Globo he decided to “follow the will of the majority of Brazilian workers.” He’d previously called the amendment an “opportunistic” attempt by Lula to win reelection, then said his position changed after listening to workers.

The interview didn’t specify which ministries would be cut or how much the reductions would save. It also didn’t explain how the wage and pension pledges would be financed. Congress would have to approve any ministry cuts.

Family roles and unresolved appointments

Flávio said his brother Eduardo wouldn’t be foreign minister if he were elected. “Não, ele não vai ser meu chanceler” (“No, he will not be my foreign minister”), he told interviewer Renata Lo Prete, according to Estão. Flávio called Eduardo a political persecutee who was abroad denouncing abuses in Brazil. Eduardo, a former federal deputy, lives in the United States and has lobbied for sanctions on Brazil over the Supreme Court conviction of Jair Bolsonaro for a coup attempt, Estão reported. Terra reported that Eduardo was sentenced in Brazil to prison for coercion.

Asked whether Jair Bolsonaro would receive a government post, Flávio said it was “not on the radar.” He said his father had never discussed a post with him or suggested he wanted to work in government. Flávio denied he’d support changing the law to let his father succeed him in 2030. Terra reported that he said Jair would climb the ramp of the Planalto presidential palace at the inauguration. The identity of a foreign minister, any other role for Eduardo and whether Jair Bolsonaro would hold a formal post remain unspecified.

Prediction-market prices cited by The Rio Times were described as bets, not polls. One article reported Polymarket prices of 77.2% for Flávio and 23.5% for Lula, with about US$185 million in total bets, and Kalshi figures of 78% and 22%. The articles said the markets update frequently and prices can change.