BRAZILIANS voting in the first round of their presidential election today faced a choice between “what is best in the new generation” — the Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad and his Communist Party running mate Manuela d’Avila — and a government “worse than Temer’s,” the communists declared.

Mr Haddad was polling in second place as the country voted, with far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, an open fan of the dictatorship of the 1970s and ’80s who has criticised it only for not killing enough people, enjoying a 14-point lead, although neither looked likely to get the 50 per cent necessary to avoid a run-off.

The previous PT candidate, former president Inacio Lula da Silva, had been a clear frontrunner until judges barred him from standing because of a trumped-up sleaze conviction based on the testimony of a single convict whose sentence was reduced in return for it.

The Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) has called Lula’s disqualification part of a long-running coup against democracy by the elites, which began with the constitutional overthrow of PT president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the installation of Michel Temer, who immediately embarked on savage spending cuts.

PCdoB central committee member Renato Rabelo said that attempts by the establishment to revive the so-called “centre ground” by dismissing Mr Bolsonaro and Mr Haddad as “extremes” had patently failed.

Only a victory for the Haddad-d’Avila ticket would “set the course for democratic restoration, resumption of economic growth and national development with social inclusion,” he said.