A feisty and little-known Brazilian politician has emerged as kingmaker in the country’s close presidential runoff.
Many voters saw Brazilian Senator Simone Tebet, a lawyer and university professor, for the first time when she took the stage on Aug. 29 for the campaign’s first televised debate, standing alongside Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In a surprise, Tebet made a strong impression.
When Bolsonaro at one point insulted a female journalist asking questions at the debate, Tebet leapt to her defense, pointing at the president with her index finger and saying in a firm voice: “I am not afraid of him.”
Photo: AFP
Tebet, 52, finished third in the first round of voting with 4 percent of the votes, far behind Lula, who took 48 percent, and Bolsonaro with 43 percent.
However, her share of the pie amounts to 4.9 million votes — and the difference between the two front-runners was 6.1 million.
Instantly, Tebet became the candidate to woo — and she endorsed Lula.
Photo: AFP
Tebet’s candidacy was organized by centrist parties and supported by part of the Brazilian establishment as a way to temper the polarization generated by far-right Bolsonaro and leftist Lula.
Tebet is from the city of Tres Lagoas, which has a population of 125,000, and she was its mayor from 2005 to 2010. Tebet is married to a politician from her state and they have two daughters. She is Catholic and describes herself as feminist.
Tebet played a prominent role on a congressional committee that last year investigated the Brazilian government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While on this panel, she clashed loudly with Bolsonaro’s allies.
Tebet was also the first woman to preside over the Brazilian Senate’s Constitution and Justice Committee, considered the chamber’s most important panel.
However, her biggest jump to notoriety came with her presidential candidacy.
Tebet managed “to fill a lagoon that was empty,” said Marco Antonio Teixeira, a professor of political science and an official at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
She succeeded because “she billed herself as an actual third option, strong in her criticisms of Bolsonaro and of [Lula’s] Workers Party in a balanced way, not simply seeking confrontation,” Teixeira said.
In the presidential debates, she challenged Bolsonaro and urged him to show respect for women.
This helped Tebet grab third place from center-left candidate Ciro Gomes, who polls had predicted would take that spot.
Up through the midway point of Bolsonaro’s first term, Tebet supported his government in 86 percent of the votes taken in the Senate, including one that extended gun-carrying rights to land outside rural properties, investigative news outlet Agencia Publica said.
Tebet owns three rural estates, one of which sits on land claimed by indigenous people.
She broke with Bolsonaro after she joined the congressional commission that probed the pandemic, which killed more than 680,000 people in Brazil.
During the campaign for the first round of presidential voting, Tebet promised to bring transparency to huge amounts of money administered by the Brazilian Congress, boost spending on science and technology, and provide scholarships for students at the intermediate level of education to head off school dropouts.
As analysts say Lula has to veer toward the center to win new supporters, Tebet — who has said Brazil is conservative and, for example, not ready to legalize abortion — is an important person to have on your side.
Last week, she formally endorsed Lula in the runoff on Oct. 30, while denying that this gesture meant she has given up on creating a third path in Brazilian politics.
“What is at stake is bigger than each of us,” she said.
Tebet said she would vote for Lula because of his “commitment to democracy and the constitution,” which she said she does not see in Bolsonaro.
However, she criticized Lula, credited with bringing millions of people out of poverty during his time in office from 2003 to 2010, for not really “looking in the rear view mirror” and making new proposals for how he would govern if he regains power.
Brazilian news outlets have said that Tebet could become a minister in a Lula-led government.
Tebet has denied being interested in such a job.
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