BRASILIA – The leader of Brazil’s biggest right-wing party cannot speak to his candidate for the 2026 presidential election by court order, even though his office is across the corridor.

Valdemar Costa Neto, head of the conservative Liberal Party (PL), has to call up when arriving at party headquarters to avoid bumping into former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in the lift. That makes it hard to plan campaign strategy. Still, Costa Neto is banking on Congress passing a constitutional amendment that would overturn the court order banning Bolsonaro from running for office until 2030.

“Bolsonaro’s charisma is amazing. People turn out in droves. Some cry when he appears in public,” he said in an interview. Brazil’s electoral authority declared Bolsonaro ineligible for eight years due to his baseless attacks on the country’s electronic voting system. He is also under investigation for allegedly plotting a coup after he lost the 2022 election to leftist President Luis Inacio Lula de Silva, which he denies. To prevent witness tampering in that probe, which federal police are working to conclude next month, the Supreme Court has barred conversations between Bolsonaro and Costa Neto.

The PL became the largest party in the lower house of Congress riding Bolsonaro’s coattails after Brazil’s electorate shifted to the right in 2018. Now Costa Neto is hoping the party will become the largest in the Senate in 2026 so it can muster enough support to impeach Supreme Court justices that have ruled against Bolsonaro.

The PL also made strides in municipal elections this month, winning mayoral races in two of 26 state capitals and disputing nine more in Oct. 27 runoff votes. “We got more votes in local elections than any other party, thanks to Bolsonaro. He is a very big force,” Costa Neto said. “But I cannot meet him or speak to him even though his office is meters from here,” he added. That has made campaigning difficult, especially since Bolsonaro is disorganized, resists taking advice and has extreme right views that do not help win moderates, he said.

“We must draw more centrist voters who we need to win the 2026 election, but that is very difficult for Bolsonaro to accept. We will have to convince him. The right and the extreme right do not have enough votes,” Costa Neto told Reuters. (Reuters)

Photo: Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro with supporters, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. (Reuters)…[+]

AFRICA – NAIROBI, Kenya (AFP) — Some 1,100 people across Africa have died from mpox, the African Union’s health agency said Thursday, warning that the epidemic was “going out of control” without further action. In all, 42,000 cases have been recorded in Africa since January, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said, with cases reported for the first time in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

This brings to 18 the number of African countries where mpox has been officially detected this year, it said. “Mpox is going out of control if we don’t act,” Africa CDC head Jean Kaseya told an online media briefing. “I’m so sad to say we now have more than 1,000 deaths due to mpox, as you can see this week, week 40, we have 1,100 deaths reported in total.”

The majority of deaths have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicentre of the outbreak, which launched a vaccination drive earlier this month. But Kaseya said that across the continent there were still “more new cases week after week”. “Eighteen countries is too much, we cannot continue like that,” he said. Kaseya once again urged international partners to step up and called for them to immediately release funds pledged to combat mpox. “We want now to see concrete action on the ground to stop this outbreak,” he said. Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact. It causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and can be deadly. (jamaicaobserver)…[+]

Photo: A patient suffering from mpox sits on a bench at the Kavumu hospital. (jamaicaobserver)