Pressured internally, and less than two weeks before the election, President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) used the prime space of the first speech of a head of government at the UN General Assembly this Tuesday (20) to address potential voters - with a greater focus on the domestic audience than on the world leaders who followed the speech.
As in a campaign speech, the president attacked the left and his main opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), without mentioning him by name, and listed cases of corruption at Petrobras during PT governments. Bolsonaro said that his management "eradicated the systemic corruption that existed in the country", despite investigations involving himself and his family, ministers, and former aides.
Unlike what he did in previous editions, the president adopted a more moderate tone and accepted suggestions from Itamaraty to avoid direct attacks on other countries, as he had been doing with Chile and Argentina. The exception was the criticism, also without naming names, of the regimes of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela — left-wing dictatorships which some sectors of the Workers Party are close with.
The president mentioned welcoming refugees fleeing the regime in Caracas and said that "Brazil opens its doors to welcome Catholic priests and nuns who have suffered cruel persecution from the dictatorial regime in Nicaragua."
Translated by Cassy Dias