00:12More than 150 million Brazilians are called to the polls to cast their votes on the general
00:18elections of next Sunday October 4th. Now to have more details on how Brazil is
00:22getting up for this important electoral day, let's go live to Rio de Janeiro with our colleague
00:26Belen de los Santos. Welcome once more Belen to From the South.
00:31Hello Luis, once again and we continue here in downtown Rio de Janeiro. We've been talking about
00:37the importance of this particular state and the coverage, in-depth coverage that we're doing here
00:42and to really understand why it is so important to really get to know the main concerns within
00:49Rio de Janeiro. We've been going around and talking to different people, citizens from different
00:54neighborhoods of Rio to understand what are they thinking about, what is the general population
00:59worried about this few days before the election. You can maybe hear some of the noise in the
01:05background. There are different activities. We have militants going around, calling out and
01:10chanting out for their own candidates and we've been talking about the importance that security
01:17issues in particular have for the residents of Rio de Janeiro. Let's recall that it is an urban city and
01:25also its peripheries that have been dominated by the problems of security issues, particularly with the
01:33role that militias and also drug trafficking groups have their incidents in favelas and the way that this
01:39also affects the life, the day-to-day life of different sectors of society. That has been a deep-rooted
01:46issue in this
01:47area of Brazil in particular. So it is one of the main concerns for the state and it's also a
01:53main concern
01:53nationwide. That is why the debate regarding these topics, particularly in the state, is so important.
02:00So we have the two main candidates. We talked about them. We are talking about the governorship for the
02:06state with Eduardo Paez and the support of President Lula da Silva and also Douglas Ruiz for the Liberal Party
02:13with the
02:13support of Flavio Bolsonaro. So the Bolsonaro candidate, Douglas Ruiz, has a more, an approach that is linked to giving
02:23the police, the armed forces more strength with a more,
02:27with harder penalties for anything that related to crime. So an approach in terms of security that has to do
02:35with more force and more punishment regarding anything related to the crime.
02:41The other candidates related to, in this case, the support of Lula da Silva, Eduardo Paez from the Socialist Democratic
02:49Party.
02:50They have this on the agenda as well. Again, it's a transversal issue, but the proposals are much more linked
02:58to the need of integral coordination in terms of the way that this issue needs to be tackled,
03:06understanding that it's a deep rooted issue that has to do also with the coordination between different agencies.
03:13So he is talking a lot about the importance of reinforcing that coordination to ensure that there are not different
03:21agencies tackling the issue in different forms,
03:24but that there is one integral way for the state of Rio de Janeiro to be able to tackle this
03:31very important issue.
03:33And also highlighting, we are talking again about Eduardo Paez, highlighting the importance of just cutting away every link between
03:43the state and anything related to the criminal groups
03:48that are inciting in this deep rooted issue that is security, particularly in the Rio de Janeiro.
03:55This is such an important topic that Lula da Silva, when he came back from the UN in New York
04:02and that famous speech that we all saw,
04:05well, he came to Rio and that was one of his last and major events before the election, and he
04:11came here not only to support the candidate Eduardo Paez,
04:14but also to talk and participate in several agendas regarding security and reinforcing state agencies, reinforcing agreements of cooperation in
04:24order to tackle this issue in particular.
04:26This shows how relevant the issue is and how much he is betting on winning those undecided votes, particularly in
04:36this state, that may be very much relevant to the final result.
04:40We are talking again about the third state with the most electors in the country right after Sao Paulo and
04:48Mino Gerais.
04:50Thank you, Belen, for the detailed information, as always, coming live from Rio de Janeiro.
