Thousands of Brazilians on Monday rallied to support right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, who blasted corruption in the courts during independence day celebrations.
Bolsonaro is the son of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and is vying for the presidency against leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in October elections.
A sea of green-and-yellow jerseys flooded Sao Paulo’s emblematic Avenida Paulista, where some attendees demanded the resignation of Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes as scandal engulfs Brazil’s top court.
Moraes is a polarizing figure who presided over the case that convicted Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a coup, and the ex-leader’s son has seized on recent revelations about messages sent by a disgraced banker to a number attributed to Moraes.
Daniel Vorcaro, charged with fraud, apparently asked the top judge for legal help days before his arrest in one of Brazil’s largest ever financial scandals last year. Moraes’s responses to Vorcaro, if any, are not included in the release, and he has not publicly commented on the texts.
“I am going to work to restore the credibility of the Brazilian judiciary...my candidacy is a protest,” 45-year-old Bolsonaro told the crowd. “Lula is responsible for the moral chaos that Brazil is going through today.”
The right-wing candidate asked Vorcaro to finance a film about his jailed father, it emerged in May, but he denies any wrongdoing.
Some 28,500 people attended the demonstration according to monitors at the University of Sao Paulo.
Both Lula and Bolsonaro have 41 per cent of voting intentions in a possible second round, according to a Quaest poll published Monday.
Lula, 80, took part in a military parade in the capital Brasilia to celebrate independence.
A day ahead of the national holiday, the president asserted Brazilian sovereignty without explicitly naming the United States, which imposed tariffs on the South American country in July.
“No foreign ruler has the right to tell us who we can buy from and who we can sell to. We are a sovereign country,” he stated in a video.
