Elections 2024: PT joins ex-tucano in Bolsonaro stronghold – 10/10/2023 – Power

One year before the municipal elections, the second largest Bolsonaro stronghold in the Northeast is rehearsing a clash between two groups led by evangelicals linked to former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and a candidacy by a former tucano now affiliated with the PT.

Jaboatão dos Guararapes is the second largest city in Pernambuco, with 643 thousand inhabitants. The municipality, in the metropolitan region of Recife, has been governed since 2017 by Bolsonarists, being the second largest stronghold in the segment, currently behind only Maceió (AL), also administered by PL.

The camp of Bolsonaro’s defenders is split in the city and there are two pre-candidacies: that of the current mayor, Mano Medeiros (PL), and that of federal deputy Clarissa Tércio (PP). Both have the evangelical segment as their main base, and the chances of reconciliation are remote.

The left is now beginning to organize itself, with former mayor Elias Gomes joining the PT. The membership event, in September, was attended by the party’s national president, Gleisi Hoffmann.

Elias Gomes was mayor from 2009 to 2016 and was affiliated, during that period, with the PSDB, a party historically opposed to the PT. In 2020, he left the party and went to the MDB, where he now leaves to join President Lula’s party.

Despite a past with differences, the arrival of Elias Gomes is seen as an asset for the PT, which could have a competitive candidate in a significant city in the Northeast.

The receptive climate in the PT today contrasts with the past, when Elias Gomes shared publications critical of the PT on social media, especially during the period of former president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment and when Lula was the target of Operation Lava Jato.

A Sheet Elias minimized differences in the past and said he wants to repeat Lula’s strategy of bringing together forces from the left and center in the dispute.

“Jaboatão has no middle ground. It is one of the few cities in Brazil that expresses the polarization between the right and the left. We have the support of PT, PV, PC do B in the federation, the MDB and we are talking to Solidariedade. I did a political repositioning to face the challenge of confronting these political forces”, he states.

The former mayor also said that he was against Dilma’s impeachment. However, one of Elias’ sons, Betinho Gomes, voted in favor of the PT member’s removal in 2016 when he was a federal deputy.

On the day of the impeachment, Elias Gomes published on social media that the removal was not “the desirable solution, but far from a coup, as the commission of a criminal offense was certified by the TCU”. PT members often say that there was a coup.

Dilma had her mandate revoked in an impeachment process that took place in the Chamber and the Senate. Both Houses considered that the then president committed a crime of responsibility for the so-called “fiscal pedals”, with the opening of budget credit without Congressional approval. The decision, in terms of process and merits, was followed without challenge by the Federal Supreme Court.

“That was the assessment at that time, today I see that there was a big conspiracy. In the last election, I voted for Lula in both rounds, and in 2018 I voted for Haddad in the second round”, says Elias Gomes.

In August 2017, Betinho Gomes, at the time in the PSDB, said that Lula should apologize to the country.

The split in the Bolsonarist camp in Jaboatão began in 2022, when then-mayor Anderson Ferreira vetoed the entry of then state deputy Clarissa Tercio into the PL.

Anderson’s allies claim that the deputy could take part of her electorate, as both originate from the evangelical segment, and strengthen herself internally in the PL itself, presided over by Anderson in Pernambuco.

Clarissa then joined the PP and launched her candidacy for federal deputy, having received the second most votes in the state and city, behind only Anderson’s brother, André. The then mayor resigned from his position to run for governor and was defeated in the first round.

In Anderson’s place, then vice-mayor Mano Medeiros took office in April 2022. The Ferreira clan supports Mano’s re-election in 2024.

In contrast, the PP launched the pre-candidacy of federal deputy Clarissa Tércio. The party is led in the state by federal deputy Eduardo da Fonte, who is part of President Lula’s allied base in the Chamber, but is also an ally of Bolsonarists in the local field.

The surname used in politics alludes to his father, pastor Francisco Tércio, president of the Assembly of God Novas de Paz.

Clarissa was elected for the first time in 2018, when she became a state deputy for the PSC at the time. The parliamentarian’s career is marked by other controversial moments. During the pandemic, she defended the use of chloroquine, a medication proven to be ineffective for Covid.

In 2020, she participated in a demonstration with the aim of preventing a legal abortion in a maternity hospital in Recife.

This year, the Attorney General’s Office opened an investigation into the deputy’s publications during the January 8 attacks. The PGR understood, in May, in an opinion sent to the STF, that there was no crime on the part of the deputy in sharing a video of a participant in the events in Brasília.

Clarissa’s family has a radio station with programs aimed at an evangelical audience.

Both Clarissa and the PT group are betting on the erosion of the PL political group, which commands Jaboatão City Hall. Their main argument behind the scenes is that Anderson Ferreira, political godfather of the current mayor, received only 28% of the votes in Jaboatão in the first round of the election for governor.

The assessment in local political circles is that the city itself removed the former mayor from the second round of the state election amid the fierce dispute with current governor Raquel Lyra (PSDB).

Elias Gomes is betting on the Bolsonaro split to go to a possible second round. He articulates the assembly of a broad front with left and center parties and hopes to count on Lulista votes. In the second round of the presidential election, in Jaboatão, the PT member beat Bolsonaro by 55.75% to 44.25% in valid votes.

A Sheet also found out from members of the PL that, if the scenario continues, Mayor Mano Medeiros may even avoid the consistent defense of Bolsonarism to appeal to centrist voters, as Clarissa Tercio tends to make a more radical defense of the former president.