By Brendan O'Boyle, Sebastian Recondio and Luis Nova
BRASILIA/SAO PAULO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Brazilians demonstrated for and against their presidential candidates on Sunday as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro prepared to meet in their first televised debate with just one week left in the campaign.
Pro-Bolsonaro crowds wearing Brazil's national colors of yellow, green and blue packed Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo's financial center, where the candidate addressed the crowd.
Lula supporters wearing red, symbolic of his Workers' Party, filled Brasilia's plaza of government buildings, and students backing the president protested against Bolsonaro in Rio de Janeiro.
Polls show a close race for the October 25 runoff, with Bolsonaro, son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, holding a slight advantage after finishing nearly 2 percentage points ahead of leftist Lula in the election's first round on October 4.
Both candidates hope to engage the 33 million voters who stayed home in the election's first round, equal to about one in five eligible voters.
The debate in Sao Paulo is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. (2300 GMT) and air on broadcaster Band. The last debate in the election's first round was canceled at the last minute when Lula and Bolsonaro pulled out.
Once a hallmark of Brazilian democracy following the end of the country's 21-year military dictatorship in 1985, televised presidential debates have lost relevance as leading candidates have increasingly chosen to stay away.
BITTER POLITICS
The debate between Senator Bolsonaro and President Lula is expected to be tense and personal.
Bitter polarization between supporters of the elder Bolsonaro and Lula has dominated Brazilian politics for nearly a decade. Many Bolsonaro supporters believe Lula should be jailed over corruption scandals that ensnared his Workers' Party, while many Lula backers argue former President Bolsonaro's conviction and imprisonment for a coup attempt were warranted.
"I don't like bandits. Out with Lula!" said demonstrator Vera de Sousa in Sao Paulo.
At the Sao Paulo rally, crowd members held aloft a large inflatable of Lula in a prisoner's uniform, while rallygoers in Brasilia chanted "Bolsonaro in jail" and an effigy of Bolsonaro showed the former president with bloody hands.
"We need the current government to remain in power. If another government comes in, we're, excuse my language, screwed," said Lula supporter Sonia Maria at the Brasilia rally.
Lula spent 580 days in prison in 2018-2019 for a corruption conviction that was later overturned because of flaws in the investigations and legal proceedings. Former President Bolsonaro, meanwhile, received a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after losing his reelection bid to Lula in 2022. He is serving that underhouse arrest due to health issues.
The younger Bolsonaro has said his father's trial was a "farce" and has promised to seek amnesty for him if elected president.
"There are seven days left until we free Brazil from (Lula's) Workers’ Party. And you will see Jair Messias Bolsonaro placing the presidential sash on his son," Bolsonaro told the crowd in Sao Paulo.
In a post on X, Lula said that anyone who voted for his opponent would get his father and brothers as a "bonus gift."
ANGER OVER META
A dispute over whether Meta’s platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, treated the two candidates equally has injected new tension into the campaign's final days.
Lula’s coalition said his Instagram account and posts were restricted, and local newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported internal Meta messages that acknowledged those restrictions and said the platform had recommended Bolsonaro’s profile and WhatsApp channel to users.
Meta said it had experienced global technical glitches but denied any political bias. “Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false,” the company said.
Civil society groups were planning a protest for Monday at Meta's main office in Sao Paulo, against "the company’s interference in the Brazilian electoral process," its organizers said in a press release.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Boyle and Luis Nova in Brasilia, Leticia Fucuchima and Sebastian Rocandio in Sao Paulo; Writing by Brendan O'Boyle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Deepa Babington)
