Ronaldo Caiado Launches Presidential Campaign with Focus on Public Security

Ronaldo Caiado of the PSD party officially launched his campaign for the presidency on Sunday with a mass at the Goiânia Cathedral and a motorcade through several cities in the state of Goiás. The candidate focused his initial agenda on public security, visiting municipalities with high violence rates to highlight his record as governor. During his speeches, Caiado proposed classifying criminal factions as terrorist organizations and suggested a project to confiscate the assets of men who assault women, while increasing the prison sentence for such crimes to 40 years. He also expressed a desire to change the criteria for Supreme Court appointments, proposing a minimum age of 60 to prevent excessively long mandates.

The campaign launch took place without the presence of Caiado's running mate and PSD president, Gilberto Kassab, who remained in São Paulo. This absence followed recent comments by Kassab to businessmen in which he stated that the Centrão is with President Lula and that Flávio Bolsonaro has zero chance of winning. While a center-leaning source framed Caiado as attempting to sell himself as a third way between his opponents, a center-right source framed him as positioning himself as a viable opposition to Lula and an alternative to the two main poles of the dispute. Caiado dismissed suggestions of an alliance with Lula, asserting that he is the only politician with a mandate in Brazil who has never voted for the president.

According to a Genial/Quaest poll cited by the center-right source, Caiado currently holds 4 percent of voting intentions for the first round, trailing Lula at 38 percent and Flávio Bolsonaro at 31 percent.