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Sao Paulo, Brazil:
After shedding eight elections, Regina Bento Sequeira got here up with a plan to win a metropolis council seat in Brazil: She reinvented herself as a superhero, “Captain Chloroquine.”
The title — which can really seem on the poll for the nation’s native elections Sunday — is a nod to her political idol, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who hails chloroquine as a surprise drug in opposition to Covid-19 regardless of a slate of research discovering it’s ineffective.
Almost as controversial because the hotly debated malaria drug is Brazil’s peculiar observe of permitting candidates to run below pseudonyms like Sequeira’s, a phenomenon that has exploded regardless of complaints from critics that it detracts from severe politics.
To Sequeira, it’s the solely approach candidates like her — common Brazilians with out deep pockets — can hope to get voters’ consideration.
She has been crisscrossing Rio de Janeiro in a metallic yellow convertible emblazoned with the nickname and handing out flyers with an image of herself decked out in a Captain Marvel outfit, asking voters to decide on her for metropolis council to combat each Covid-19 and corruption.
“It’s the only way to make my mark. I don’t work in politics, I don’t have support, I don’t have money. That’s why I chose this path,” says Sequeira, 59, who’s a lawyer in her day job.
But she says she has no illusions about her probabilities.
“Are you joking?” she says when requested who she thinks will win.
“The same ones as always!”
Sunday’s ballots may even function Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Bin Laden, Trump and Obama among the many 576,000 candidates vying for some 64,000 posts nationwide.
“Because there are a lot of candidates, people try to use names that stand out,” says Natalia Aguiar, a political scientist on the Federal University of Minas Gerais.
“The phenomenon of irreverent names could be seen as a symptom of a deeper problem: We overvalue individual candidates at the expense of party politics,” she informed AFP.
Get out the vote
Sequeira first ran for public workplace in 2004.
She has tried a collection of pseudonyms over time, a lot of them drawn from her actual nickname, Zefa.
In 2016, the 12 months the augmented actuality recreation Pokemon Go got here out, she was “PokeZefa.”
In 2010, she was “Zefa White, fighting the budget dwarves.”
In 2008, she was “Cave Zefa,” with a Flintstones-inspired emblem, criticizing what she referred to as the Stone Age degree of growth in her hometown, Sao Joao de Meriti.
But it was as “Super Zefa” in 2006 the she acquired 5,713 votes, probably the most but in her profession. So this 12 months she is attempting her luck once more as a superhero.
“Chloroquine was the hot topic of the day” throughout candidate registration, she stated.
“Everyone was talking about chloroquine, whether negatively or positively. That’s exactly what I wanted.”
Does it work?
Political communication specialist Janaine Aires sees the pattern as an extension of Brazil’s tradition of nicknames.
“It’s a characteristic of Brazilian culture: We try to have a certain proximity to our interlocutors,” says Aires, a professor on the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.
Pseudonymous candidates all hope to imitate the legendary success of Tiririca (Grumpy), a clown elected to Congress in 2010 with probably the most votes nationwide after working on the slogan, “It can’t get any worse.”
He has since been reelected twice.
But political analysts say it doesn’t at all times work.
“There’s no evidence this strategy gives candidates an advantage,” says Aguiar.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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