The patron saint, the swindler and the supreme court: these are the key ingredients of Brazil’s turbulent, nailbiting presidential election on 4 October.

One hundred and fifty-eight million Brazilians will vote this Sunday 4 October for a new president, a state governor, two senators, one federal congressperson and one state assembly member.

Poll after poll shows the two main presidential candidates, sitting president Lula and far right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, neck and neck.

But it is another man’s shadow that lies over these elections, the shadow of the most successful financial fraudster that Brazil has ever known, Daniel Vorcaro.

Over the last few years Vorcaro, a smooth talking crook with a lavish lifestyle, built up a vast web of influence, with scores of politicians of all parties on his payroll, as he bankrolled luxury hotels, executive jets, and sumptuous dinners. He also enjoyed close, unseemly relations with several Supreme Court judges, employing their relatives at hugely inflated salaries.

Volcaro used his bank, Master, to absorb the pension funds of millions of low paid civil servants, promising unrealistically high returns to the state governors who entrusted them to him, as he wined and dined them. When the Central Bank refused to underwrite Master’s financial wizardry and the bank collapsed, he tried to flee the country but was caught at the airport.

Vorcaro now sits in prison awaiting trial but his mobile phones, confiscated by the police, have revealed a network of connections, not only to judges and politicians, but to presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, heard imploring for money to make a film about his dad. The film’s budget is much higher than that of Brazil’s recent Oscar winners, but Dark Horse, as it is called, is so bad, even as hagiographies go, that it has not been screened during the campaign. The question remains, where did the money really go?

Phone a judge

Vorcaro’s phone logs also revealed his close relations with a number of Supreme Court judges, including Alexandre Morais, the justice responsible for handing down harsh sentences on the Jair Bolsonaro-led coup plotters of 2022. But it was not the police who made them public, but another judge, Andre Mendonça, appointed by Jair Bolsonaro when president.

Mendonça’s unprecedented decision was contrary to all previous practice at the court. Another Bolsonaro appointee, Judge Kassio Nunes Marques, then decided to censor whatsapp messages containing material damaging to Flávio Bolsonaro. These decisions were challenged by other judges, precipitating the Supreme court into a political free for all, again completely unprecedented.

Unleashing religious wars

This week as the dust began to settle on the Supreme Court scandal, an entirely new scandal broke, this time involving the Catholic church. Flávio is alleged to have said that, if elected, he would remove Our Lady of Aparecida, enshrined at the Basilica of Aparecida, near São Paulo, from her traditional position as Brazil’s patron saint. Flávio claimed this was fake news, but it sparked a huge backlash among the country’s Catholics, who still make up over 50 per cent of the population, while evangelicals number less than 30 per cent.

Flávio then made things worse by declaring that when he is president, his first act will be to decree that Brazil belongs to Jesus Christ, apparently forgetting his previous promise that his first act would be to pardon his father, currently serving a 27-year sentence for trying to overthrow democracy.

Theologians and religious leaders pointed out that Brazil is a lay state, which should guarantee the rights of all faiths. Political scientists meanwhile lament the lack of political debate, of discussion about programmes or projects instead of controversies about religion or the Supreme Court.

Trump the piper

And this is an election where the stakes have never been higher, not only for Brazil but for the region. Brazil and Uruguay are now the only South American countries that do not have a rightwing president, dancing to Trump’s tune. By invading Venezuela, kidnapping Maduro, and literally seizing the country’s oil and gold, Trump showed the lengths to which he is prepared to go.

If Bolsonaro were elected, kowtowing and bootlicking, Brazil would become the jewel in the crown of Trump’s neocolonial vision for the Americas. China’s expansion in the region, from infrastructure to electric car factories, would be blocked.

Trump has made it clear that he does not want Lula to win and that he will do everything he can to stop him doing so. So worried are they about this possibility that 31 US lawmakers have written to Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking that the US government respects and recognizes the outcome of the Brazilian elections. They state that ‘US actions constitute an extraordinary interference in Brazil’s national sovereignty and an attempt to tilt the scales in favor of far-right candidate Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’.

Lula might well win the election by a small margin, leading to the need for a second round at the end of October, when the voters of several other conservative candidates running in the first round will coalesce around Bolsonaro. So the outcome will remain up for grabs.

This is Lula’s fourth presidential election. At 81 years old, he is still remarkably energetic, he is a recognized world leader, but it is also a stark demonstration of the PT’s inability to produce any other candidate with his popularity and charisma.