Faced with the looming threat that right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro could soon win the second-round of elections and become the next president of Brazil, hundreds of economists from across the country and around the globe have joined forces to declare their support for Fernando Haddad, the Workers’ Party candidate, in order to save the nation’s democracy and protect “essential values” like social inclusion, peace, and equal protection under the law.

“We believe that democracy, search for peace, individual freedoms, plurality of opinions, tackling prejudice and inequalities (of income, race, regional and gender) are non-negotiable and essential values.” —Declaration of Economists in Support of Brazilian Democracy While not all signers of the declaration against Bolsonaro necessarily agree with every bit of Haddad’s economic plan, they warn that a victory by the nation’s regressive and far-right forces puts “Brazilian democracy and the institutions of the rule of Law” at stake.

According to Brazilian-American social scientist  Luísa Abbott Galvão in a piece posted to Common Dreams Monday, the Bolsonaro campaign was built on his “disdain for democracy and glorification of authoritarianism.”

The candidate, Galvão explained, has “gained infamy worldwide for past comments praising torturers and for asserting during a 1999 televised appearance that the Brazilian dictatorship should have executed ‘at least 30,000’ people. As a presidential candidate, Bolsonaro has called for political opponents to be shot, promised to deny the legitimacy of any election results that don’t declare him the winner, and refused to partake in debates ahead of the general elections.” 

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