How a yellow jersey is dividing Brazilians into the yellow or green party
It’s the first week of January, and the political world is waiting to see who the best candidate will be for the second round of Brazil’s presidential election. The election will take place in April. The first round of voting took place on October 7-9, and the second on February 8-11.
There are a total of 16 candidates vying for the prize, including incumbent Dilma Rousseff, who was voted in at the end of 2013 after garnering 66.5 percent of the vote in the first round. The other 12 are former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, leftist Workers’ Party president Luiz Henrique Mandetta, ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, rightist Marina Silva, far-right Geraldo Alckmin, former governor of São Paulo Eduardo Campos, Brazilian Social Democracy leader and Green candidate Marina Silva, environmentalist Marina Silva and far-right Bolsonaro.
All of the candidates are running on a left-of-centre platform, and they have all tried to portray themselves as the alternative to the more conservative Lula da Silva. However, they all have their own strong individualities and their own political visions.
One of the important points that is being brought out by the election is the split in the Brazilian left-wing party, known as the Socialist Party (PT).
The PT got its name from the first socialist republic in Latin America. Now, the socialist party is considered an extreme leftist party, but it was once one of the most important left-wing forces in the country.
The PT was and is an important party in the Latin American social justice movement, but it was also a party that did not always share the ideals of the left in Europe, due to its strong conservative streak – the party often refused to condemn the dictator in power in Argentina, Carlos Menem.
However, the PT had begun to change its political position, becoming more open to the ideas of the left on social and economic issues. The party wanted to distance itself from the more radical forms of socialism in Latin America. For example, the PT leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva even tried to distance himself from the violent left-wing group O Globo do Século (The Globo of the Century) in the early 2000s.
In the run
