Merval is self-critical about voting for Bolsonaro in 2018, but defends a second round to corner Lula.

247 - Journalist Merval Pereira, from the newspaper O Globo, who defended the coup d'état against former president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the political imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—phenomena that paved the way for the rise of fascism in 2018—did today, in his columnThis was a self-criticism for having supported Jair Bolsonaro that year. However, in the same text, he attacked Dilma, who is a symbol of dignity, and argued that Lula should be cornered by the right wing.

"It was a mistake to consider Bolsonaro the best opponent of the PT. After four years in government, it's clear that it's unacceptable for the president of the Republic to be someone with absolutely no idea what it means to hold the office. Such a lack of composure from someone who intends to continue representing the country is unacceptable. Bolsonaro is losing the electorate that voted for him in 2018 because they considered him capable of opposing Lula, but this dichotomy has proven simplistic. Opposing Lula, or the PT, cannot mean supporting a candidacy or, by itself, justify a vote. Not even the strategic voting seen in 2018 to defeat the PT can explain supporting just any candidate. We've already had presidents who didn't deserve to be in office, like Dilma, who was brought to power by Lula and then proved incapable of governing, or Bolsonaro, driven by anti-PT sentiment to a place where he should never have been," wrote Merval.

"Apparently there is no more time for a third option, although the latest polls show growth for Ciro Gomes and Simone Tebet. But there is time to force a second round in which the likely winner, Lula, is obliged to negotiate with these other two candidates to form a broad-spectrum government, not just one representing the peripheral left of the PT," he concluded.

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