Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Internet, abortion and religion affected Brazilian presidential elections

Brazil has long accepted far-left Lula da Silva as their beloved president. Relying on natural resources and help from our far-left White House resident, he has kept the Brazilian economy on course and enjoyed popularity.
As you might expect, Brazil didn’t seem to mind that their most popular presidential candidate, Dilma Rousseff, is a communist and a terrorist. After all, history classes in Brazil don’t teach that communism killed off 100 million, so they simply aren’t aware of the death connection. (Of course, how many Americans are?).
So the last thing you might expect of this country that tolerates Marxism is resistance to abortion.
But abortion turns out to matter to Brazilians.
God has a mysterious way of working.
Donald Hank

Internet, abortion and religion affected Brazilian presidential elections

By Julio Severo
Abortion and religion may have provoked a run-off in the presidential election in Brazil.
Polls in the in the past months had consistently been giving Dilma Rousseff a victory of 51-59%. Rousseff is the chosen candidate of popular socialist President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva to replace him in the Brazilian presidency. According to the Brazilian Constitution, a candidate wins the election when he makes 50% or more, but apparently absolute majority escaped Rousseff, and she will have to work harder in the run-off.
Major newspapers in Brazil have attributed this result to abortion. Folha de S. Paulo reported that “Dilma lost votes among evangelicals”, while O Estado de S. Paulo said that “something new began to happen”, and then it details that Rousseff, who wanted liberalization of the abortion laws in 2007, “had to say openly that now she is against abortion and that she would take no measure to legalize it”.
O Estado de S. Paulo suggested that “the controversy on the legalization of abortion may have had a greater influence on the ebbing of those that intended to vote for Dilma”.
In other article, entitled “Internet e religião podem explicar queda da petista” (Internet and religion may explain drop of Workers’ Party member [Dilma Rousseff]), the same Brazilian paper says that her drop was caused, among other reasons, “because of the controversy on internet over her view on abortion”.
Many Brazilian websites, including Notícias Pró-Família (the Portuguese version of LifeSiteNews) and my blog, have been working to make Brazilians aware of the life issues. The Brazilian election on October 3 revealed the results of this hard work.
Overall, Brazilian voters are disillusioned with politics. Excepting for the abortion issue, Brazilians do not take elections seriously anymore and any candidate can be elected. In fact, a clown received massive voting in São Paulo and, even though he is illiterate, he will be a representative in the Brazilian Congress!
Rousseff, a self-proclaimed Catholic and the political heiress of Lula, won 46%. Her main opponent, Catholic social-democrat Jose Serra, got 32%, and evangelical Marina Silva got 19%. Silva, who for many years was a member of the Workers’ Party and now is in the Green Party, has connections to Al Gore and is famous for her focus on environment issues.
Lula has noted that, for the first time in the Brazilian history, all the presidential candidates are socialists. Nevertheless, he prefers Rousseff, who was a member of a communist guerilla group in the 1960s and probably will be politically more aggressive in the promotion of her party’s agenda.
Even though none of them is a legitimate pro-family candidate, pro-family advocates in Brazil have chosen the “lesser evil” path. Probably it has worked. For two months, a YouTube video from Brazilian Baptist minister Paschoal Piragine has garnered almost 3 million hits. His message exposes the pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality policies of the Workers’ Party and encourages evangelicals not to vote in it.
For many months, Lula’s high popularity and several polls signalized a certain and easy victory for Dilma Rousseff. Yet, the run-off provoked by the abortion issue may make her victory elusive.
Other articles by Julio Severo: Last Days Watchman

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