Voters set to punish mayor who 'made Rio de Janeiro miserable'
Source: The Observer
Voters set to punish mayor who made Rio de Janeiro miserable
A landslide in Sundays election is predicted to sweep away the citys disastrous conservative leader
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sat 28 Nov 2020 15.49 GMT
Tarcísio Motta is one of Rios best-known lefties but when the city elects its new leader on Sunday, hell be voting for the right.
Weve got a mayor whos an enemy of the city, and this cant go on. Its ludicrous, complained the socialist councillor, one of millions of exasperated locals desperate to evict the neo-Pentecostal bishop Marcelo Crivella from city hall after what is widely regarded as a dismal four-year reign.
To deny Crivella a second term, leftwing critics such as Motta have one choice: holding their noses and backing his only challenger, the centre-right ex-mayor Eduardo Paes.
Ill vote for Eduardo Paes and Ill oppose him from day one, Motta vowed, claiming Crivellas authoritarian, fundamentalist, anti-Rio project had to be stopped. The city doesnt deserve this government, he said. Our vote is to veto Crivella.
Crivella won power in 2016, one of the opening acts of a Bible-bashing conservative backlash against Brazils left that saw the far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro claim the presidency two years later.
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Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/28/voters-punish-mayor-marcelo-crivella-rio-de-janeiro-miserable