Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has mixed military parades on the country's Independence Day with political rallies in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday.

According to Reuters, opponents and legal experts have scrutinized the Brazilian president for combining the public celebrations of Brazil's bicentennial with his re-election campaign.

Polls have shown him trailing behind leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ahead of the October 2 elections in Brazil. Bolsonaro's supporters gathered at Brasilia's mall and Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach.

Bolsonaro started the celebrations in the capital, Brasilia, where he took part in a military procession celebrating 200 years of Brazil's independence from Portugal. 

He then travelled to Rio de Janeiro to attend military displays, which included paratroopers landing on the shore and warships off-shore. He also met thousands of people on Copacabana beach.

In Brasilia, Bolsonaro told the crowd that they knew they were facing a "battle of good versus evil," BBC reported. He kicked off the rally there by presiding over the military parade.

One supporter, Sidney Granja, said they came to support Bolsonaro as he was being "attacked by Communists and institutions controlled" by the former president.

Granja noted that he was confident that the current Brazilian president would win the elections democratically and would concede if defeated by Lula.

Lula's campaign coalition lawyers called on electoral courts to probe Bolsonaro's rallies as "a misuse of public resources" for campaigning.

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Jair Bolsonaro on Brazil's Independence Day

Another supporter who attended the Independence Day rally at Copacabana, Tania Moura, said Jair Bolsonaro was their "freedom." Moura noted that she was attending the rally as Brazil has not had a democracy for a long time.

There was an official airshow and a paratroop display in Copacabana, and once his official duties were done, Bolsonaro then addressed the crowd again. 

The president told the crowd that people need to wake up from the "lethargy, from the lies, the pretty words but also of the cheating of our population."

Bolsonaro also said that Lula is a type of person that "must be extirpated from public life." Lula then responded to Bolsonaro's digs against him by comparing how he celebrated Independence Day as a leader.

Lula noted that he has never used the "national day, the day for the Brazilian people, the most important day because of independence, as a political campaign tool."

Lula, the former president of Brazil, was previously jailed for corruption. However, he had his convictions annulled by the Supreme Court.

Brazil's Election Day

According to Reuters, a Genial/Quaest poll released that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's lead over Jair Bolsonaro ahead of the October elections has narrowed to 10 points from 12. The poll said Lula is seen to win 44% of support in the first-round vote against Bolsonaro's 34%.

A previous poll showed that Lula had 44% and Bolsonaro had 32%. The poll interviewed 2,000 voters in person between September 1-4, with a margin of error of two percentage points.

In August, The Guardian reported that hundreds of thousands signed a pro-democracy manifesto amid fears that Bolsonaro would conduct a "Trump-style insurrection against democracy."

Bolsonaro has repeatedly promoted anti-democratic protests since taking office in 2019 and attacked Brazil's institutions. He also called on his supporters to take to the streets "for the last time."

Intelligence chiefs are reportedly probing whether radical right-wing extremists are conspiring to attack Jair Bolsonaro's supporters at the rally and blame the incident on leftists in an attempt to shift the direction of the election results.

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This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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