Brazil's leading presidential candidates snub TV debate ahead of Sunday's election

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro snubbed a planned debate ahead of the first round of the presidential election, depriving 158 million voters from watching them face off.

A debate organized by TV Globo, the country’s most popular broadcaster, was set for Thursday and offered the final opportunity for the two presidential front-runners to face off before polls open on Sunday.

The cancellation marks the first time in 20 years that Brazil's leading candidates have rejected any public confrontation. Other media companies and business groups have organized debates with other candidates since Aug. 23.

Lula said Wednesday he would not attend the TV Globo debate that was scheduled to include Bolsonaro and two other candidates. Hours before the event was set to begin in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro , also bowed out.

The broadcaster said in a statement that the debate was canceled because two rulings, one from the country’s electoral court and the other from Brazil’s Supreme Court , had created “legal uncertainty” about the event.

The first decision ordered TV Globo to remove an empty seat that was reserved for Lula, who would have been the focus of questions from his rivals in attendance. The latter ruling forced the broadcaster to invite candidate Renan Santos, a critic of the president and the top opposition candidate.

Analysts say Lula and Bolsonaro have both conducted a strategy of avoiding direct confrontations on stage before the first round of voting. They are still likely to clash in the three weeks before the Oct. 25 runoff if there is one.

Recent polls show the two men as the only candidates with a real chance of reaching the second round or scoring an outright win. Both candidates made online broadcasts at the same time as the debate was scheduled.

Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper university in Sao Paulo, said the snub from the front-runners and the cancellation of a once high-stakes debate show how turbulent these elections are.

“Lula and Flávio would be massacred by the other candidates. There's no real debate on ideas and projects anymore. It is a fist fight, it is getting disrespect,” Melo said. “Flávio teased Lula into going to the debate, where Lula would have four against him. At the end, Flávio saw this could be bad for him too.”

“Going to debates has become a part of a calculation in Brazil. For those who have a better chance of being in the runoff, to miss a big debate is to avoid tripping and giving ground away,” he added.

Lula on Wednesday repeated the argument he has used to reject attending other debates prior to first-round voting.

“You cannot bring someone who has 49% (in the polls) to debate with someone who has 1%,” he said.

Bolsonaro, during a live broadcast Thursday on his social medial channels, said his last-minute cancellation was about “censorship imposed by the electoral court,” in a reference to the decision that stopped the broadcaster from keeping Lula's empty seat on stage.

“I called you to debate, Lula, more than twice. You ran away. We want to debate with you, shove the truth on you face,” Bolsonaro said.

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