International
Meet the feisty woman kingmaker in Brazil’s presidential runoff
AFP | Marcelo Silva De Sousa
A feisty and little-known woman senator has emerged as kingmaker in Brazil’s very close presidential runoff.
Many Brazilians saw Simone Tebet, a lawyer and university professor, for the first time when she took stage the night of August 29 for the campaign’s first televised debate, standing alongside rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro and leftist icon and ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
And in a surprise, Tebet made a strong impression.
When Bolsonaro at one point insulted a woman journalist asking questions at the debate, the senator leapt to her defense, pointing at the president with her index finger and saying in a firm voice: “I am not afraid of him.”
Tebet, 52, finished third in the first round voting with four percent of the votes, far behind Lula, who took 48 percent, and Bolsonaro with 43 percent.
But her share of the pie amounts to 4.9 million votes — and the difference between the two frontrunners was 6.1 million.
Instantly, Tebet became the candidate to woo. And she endorsed Lula.
‘Third option’
Tebet’s candidacy was organized by centrist parties and supported by part of the Brazilian establishment as a way to temper the polarization generated by the far-right president Bolsonaro and the leftist hero of the working class and poor, Lula, of the Workers Party.
Tebet is from the city of Tres Lagoas, which has a population of 125,000, and she was its mayor from 2005 to 2010. It is in the west-central state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where the economy is based on agribusiness.
Tebet is married to a politician from her state and they have two daughters. She is Catholic and describes herself as feminist.
Tebet played a prominent role on a congressional committee that in 2021 investigated the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And while on this panel, she clashed loudly with Bolsonaro allies.
Tebet was also the first woman to preside over the Brazilian senate’s Constitution and Justice Committee, considered the chamber’s most important panel.
But her biggest jump to notoriety came with her presidential candidacy, which was promoted as a third way between the right and left.
Tebet managed “to fill a lagoon that was empty,” said Marco Antonio Teixeira, a professor of political science at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo.
She succeeded because “she billed herself as an actual third option, strong in her criticisms of Bolsonaro and of the Workers Party in a balanced way, not simply seeking confrontation,” said Teixeira.
In the presidential debates, she challenged Bolsonaro and urged him to show respect for women; the president has a penchant for making remarks seen as sexist.
This helped Tebet grab third place from center-left candidate Ciro Gomes, who polls had predicted would take that spot.
Conservative and close to agribusiness
Up through the midway point of Bolsonaro’s term, Tebet supported his government in 86 percent of the votes taken in the Senate, including one that extended gun-carrying rights to land outside rural properties, according to investigative news outlet Agencia Publica.
Tebet owns three rural estates, one of which sits on land claimed by Indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul.
She broke with Bolsonaro after she joined the congressional commission that probed the pandemic, which killed more than 680,000 people in Brazil.
During the campaign for the first round of presidential voting, Tebet promised to bring transparency to huge amounts of money administered by Congress, boost spending on science and technology, and provide scholarships for students at the intermediate level of education to head off school dropouts.
Now, as analysts say Lula has to veer toward the center to win new supporters, Tebet — who has said Brazil is conservative and not ready, say, to legalize abortion — is an important person to have on your side.
Last week, she formally endorsed Lula in the runoff on October 30, while denying that this gesture meant she has given up on creating a third path in Brazilian politics.
Tebet’s party, however, called the Brazilian Democratic Movement, chose to remain neutral in the race between Bolsonaro and Lula.
“What is at stake is bigger than each of us,” she said.
Tebet said she would vote for Lula because of his “commitment to democracy and the constitution,” which she said she does not see in Bolsonaro.
But she criticized Lula, credited with bringing millions of people out of poverty during his rule from 2003 to 2010, for not really “looking in the rear view mirror” and making new proposals for how he would govern if he regains power.
“Tebet has a way of speaking with agribusiness and women that is much more direct than Lula,” said Teixeira.
She can lure for Lula centrist voters tired of the tensions born of Bolsonaro-Lula polarization, he added.
Brazilian press reports have suggested Tebet could become a minister in Lula’s government if he wins. Tebet has denied being interested in such a job.
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(FILES) In this file photo taken on September 30, 2022 Brazilian presidential candidate Simone Tebet (MDB) arrives for a press conference after a presidential debate ahead of the October 2 general election, at the Globo television network studios called Projac in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. - It was the night of August 29, the first televised debate of candidates, when many Brazilians discovered Tebet: a white woman, lawyer and university professor, who would cause a surprise in her first presidential campaign. The senator was third in the first round on October 2, with 4% of the vote, far behind Lula (48%) and Bolsonaro (43%). But he got 4.9 million votes, when the difference between the two arch-rivals was 6.1 million. She thus became the candidate to be courted. And she supported Lula. (Photo by MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP)
International
Colombian President Gustavo Petro announces talks with clan del Golfo outside country
Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated on Friday that his government has begun talks outside the country with the Clan del Golfo, Colombia’s main criminal group also known as the Gaitanist Army.
“We have started conversations outside Colombia with the self-called Gaitanist Army,” the president said during the handover of 6,500 hectares of land to farmers in the Caribbean department of Córdoba.
The president noted that his administration “has seized more cocaine than any other government” because it seeks to “cut off the finances (of criminal groups) that fuel violence in many regions of Colombia.”
“A bill has been introduced that I hope the Congress studies thoroughly, because it essentially elevates restorative justice even for serious crimes,” Petro said.
The initiative he referred to was presented by his Minister of Justice, Eduardo Montealegre, aimed at “the consolidation of total peace.”
According to the Ministry of Justice, the bill seeks to provide the government with clear regulations to achieve the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of illegal armed groups.
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International
María Corina Machado thanks OAS allies for condemning Venezuela’s growing repression
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado expressed her gratitude on Thursday to the “allied” countries that spoke out at the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) regarding the increasing repression in Venezuela. Through her X account, she highlighted that “our regional allies took a firm stand in favor of democracy and the freedom of Venezuelans.”
The statement came a day after Gloria de Mees, rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for Venezuela, presented before the OAS the worsening situation in the country, just over a year after the elections in which President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner over opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who denounced electoral fraud.
Machado, who shared videos of speeches by representatives from Canada, the United States, Paraguay, Chile, and Panama, insisted that “Venezuela is the most urgent conflict in the Western Hemisphere and its definitive resolution is everyone’s responsibility.” She affirmed that “silence and inaction” are forms of “complicity” and urged international justice to act with “greater speed and firmness.”
Before her participation at the OAS, De Mees told EFE that the repression “is not new, but now it is systematic” and has intensified, affecting not only human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents but “everyone, because there is fear of retaliation.”
International
Over 240 guatemalans detained at Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz await deportation
At least 249 Guatemalans are currently detained at the Alligator Alcatraz detention center in Florida, United States, awaiting deportation, the Guatemalan government reported this Friday.
The Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs detailed that the figure was confirmed by U.S. authorities to Guatemalan diplomats in Miami, Florida, during a visit to the center where they had the opportunity to interview 37 of their compatriots.
“The Guatemalans we spoke with said they have been at the detention center for only a few days and have been able to communicate with family members and lawyers. Most of them were detained due to their irregular immigration status,” the Ministry stated.
According to the same source, another visit by Guatemalan diplomats has been authorized soon to meet with other nationals held at the detention center in Florida.
Alligator Alcatraz, opened just over a month ago, was built in only one week on an abandoned airport in the Everglades, a natural area west of Miami, surrounded by alligators and swamps. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sees it as a model for other centers, while activists consider it a symbol of human rights violations.
Democratic lawmakers reported the presence of 750 migrants “in cages” after entering the site on July 12. The facility currently has a capacity for 2,000 people, which could increase to 4,000, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), which manages the site.
Every year, thousands of Guatemalans leave the Central American country to migrate irregularly to the United States in search of better living conditions and to escape the poverty and violence that plague Guatemala.
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