Argentina’s president has become a combatant in Brazil’s presidential runoff. Javier Milei attacked Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva again on Tuesday, accusing him of a dirty campaign and writing that he hoped Lula’s latest trick would not include stealing the election, calling him a leftist thief. Milei has publicly backed Lula’s opponent, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Brazil’s government responded by accusing Milei of election meddling, Bloomberg reported.
The insult has a history that explains the formal response. Milei posted an image of Lula with the word thief on Instagram on October 7, and in July called him a jailbird and a thief, which prompted Brazil to recall its ambassador in Buenos Aires for consultations, according to the EFE news agency account carried by MercoPress. Lula was convicted in the Lava Jato investigation and spent 580 days in prison, but the Supreme Federal Court annulled his convictions in 2021 and restored his political rights. MercoPress noted the Brazilian government had not commented on the new message at the time of its report; the meddling accusation reported by Bloomberg is that comment, at a higher temperature.
Lula spent the same day trying to turn corruption, the right’s strongest theme, back on his opponent. At a campaign event in Maranhao state he said he would share his bank, tax and telephone records, and his family’s, if Bolsonaro would do the same, saying he wanted Brazilians to see who the thieves and corrupt people in the country really are. The challenge sits inside a wider corruption fight: a scandal involving disgraced banker Daniel Vorcaro has implicated influential figures, Bolsonaro is the only major candidate with direct links to Vorcaro, and Lula’s campaign is separately seeking Bolsonaro’s disqualification over alleged algorithmic manipulation by Meta, a story this site published on October 20.
The arithmetic has not moved. Bolsonaro won the first round with 47.03 percent of the vote against Lula’s 45.16 percent, and polls show a statistical tie ahead of Sunday’s vote. In the first runoff debate Lula asked Bolsonaro whether he intends to apply Milei’s chainsaw to public spending, which is the substantive version of the same argument now being conducted by insult: whether Brazil’s next government imports Argentina’s economic programme or rejects it. Brazil is Argentina’s main trading partner, so the winner inherits the relationship either way.