Nobel-winning writer backs Bolsonaro over Lula

A Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, the most eminent chronicler of power and corruption in Latin America, has declared that he prefers Jair Bolsonaro over Luiz In cio Lula da Silva as Brazil prepares to go to the polls later this year.

The 86-year-old Peruvian writer who holds Spanish citizenship revealed his thoughts on October's election during a talk in Uruguay on Wednesday.

The Bolsonaro case is a very difficult case, he told an audience in Montevideo. Bolsonaro's clowning around is very hard for a liberal to accept. I prefer Bolsonaro, because now I'm between Bolsonaro and Lula. Even with Bolsonaro's foolishness, he is not Lula. The writer, who was beaten to the Peruvian presidency in 1990 by Alberto Fujimori, said Lula was regarded fondly in Europe despite having been convicted of being a thief. The controversial corruption charges that Vargas Llosa referred to were annulled last year.

His support for Bolsonaro was not uncritical when it came to the president's attacks on Covid vaccines. It is insane, it is absurd to oppose them in the way he has, said Vargas Llosa. It seems irresponsible to me. The novelist has thrown his weight behind a rightwing candidate. A few months before the second round of last year s presidential election in Peru, Vargas Llosa set aside decades of lacerating criticism of the Fujimori political dynasty when he called for voters to support his former foe's daughter Keiko rather than her far-left opponent, Pedro Castillo, who nonetheless prevailed.

Peruvians should vote for Keiko Fujimori because she represents the lesser of two evils, and if she is in power there are more possibilities of saving our democracy, he wrote in his column in Spain's El Pa s.

In 2009 Alberto Fujimori, whose time as president was marked by Shining Path terrorism, economic upheaval and political corruption, was given a 25-year prison sentence for authorizing death squads and presiding over rampant graft and vote-rigging.

When Chile voted in its final round of presidential election last December, Vargas Llosa backed the ultra-conservative Jos Antonio Kast over the leftwing Gabriel Boric, the eventual winner.

The political scientist Daniel V Guisado noted that the novelist had also supported unsuccessful candidates in recent years in Argentina and Bolivia. Guisado said that Lula's backing is the largest political tombstone of the last century and that it is the biggest political tombstone of the last century. Vargas Llosa, who has drifted further to the right with age, caused a stir in October last year when he said voting the right way in elections was more important than having free elections.

Latin America will undoubtedly emerge from a very difficult situation when Latin Americans discover that they ve voted badly, he told the national convention of Spain's conservative People's party. The important thing in elections isn't that there is freedom in those elections, voting well and voting well is something that is very important because countries that vote badly, as has happened in some Latin American countries, pay dearly for it.