Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro traded barbs with actor Leonardo DiCaprio on Friday after DiCaprio urged young Brazilians to vote for a “healthy planet,” implicitly suggesting they vote against the incumbent president in the October general election. Bolsonaro retaliated by dismissing DiCaprio as a tool of “crooks who serve foreign special interests.”
DiCaprio, a self-styled environmentalist with absolutely no interest in reducing his own titanic carbon footprint, tweeted out a link to a Brazilian voter registration website on Thursday.
Brazilian youth tend to be even more apathetic about voting than teenagers in most other countries, a problem the Brazilian Left is attempting to address on behalf of challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Polls show young voters tend to dislike Bolsonaro, but voting registration for 16 and 17-year-olds declined from 2.5 million to just over 630,000 over the past ten years. The enthusiasm of even this smaller youth voting bloc for 75-year-old Lula is questionable, as he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a massive bribery scandal, and corruption tends to be a major issue among young voters worldwide. Lula’s conviction was annulled in March 2021, paving the way for his presidential bid.
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