Brazil's election: Lula or Bolsonaro Jr?

PRESS REVIEW – Friday, October 2: We look at reactions in the French papers after high school blockades turned violent across France. We also look ahead to Brazil's two-round presidential election, which begins this weekend. The electoral campaign culminated with the cancellation of a presidential debate after both President Lula and his rival Flavio Bolsonaro pulled out. Finally, this year's Comedy Wildlife Awards finalists do not disappoint.

There's lots of focus on this week's high school protests in France that turned violent on Thursday. Le Parisien evokes the anger of pupils and talks of a "situation that escalated", with more than 2,000 arrests. 

Many of the papers point their finger at the far-left France Unbowed party, whose members have publicly supported the high schoolers. Le Figaro, the right-wing daily, calls them "the proxies" of the protesters and says that behind the demonstrators lurks the "shadow of the France Unbowed party". La Croix is more tempered in its coverage, reminding us that the violence of the protests is still marginal. Libération, the left-wing paper, is one of the few dailies that actually looks at what high schoolers are demanding: more funding for schools, better school facilities and adequate numbers of teachers and personnel. It offers some examples of how bad the situation is for some schools: one maths teacher was absent for three months and in one school, only one toilet was available for 1,200 pupils. Communist paper L'Humanité denounces the police action against protesters on Thursday. Its headline reads "Take your police away first" – a play on words of the word "bac", which also means high-school leaving diploma.

L'Humanité is also focusing on Brazil on its front page. Brazilians head to the voting booths this Sunday for the first round of presidential elections and the election is garnering a lot of attention in the papers there. The election pits incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Jornal do Brasil is focusing on polls that predict Lula will win the first round, but it could be neck and neck for the run-off on October 25. The paper also reports that international observers have arrived in Brazil to observe the correct undertaking of the electoral process.

It has been a bitter electoral campaign, culminating on Thursday with the cancellation of the final presidential debate, set to be hosted by O Globo, after both Lula and Bolsonaro refused to attend. In its editorial, Brazilian daily O Globo explains why it cancelled the debate. The Superior Electoral court authorities refused to leave an empty chair for absent candidates to allow the other candidates to direct questions at them in absentia. As O Globo explains, this is a deep-seated tradition in campaign debates and part of the democratic process. The other grievance was the inclusion of certain candidate from Lula's party who did not meet the requirements necessary to participate in the debates. O Globo says that faced with political interference and violations of the constitution and press freedom, it had no option but to cancel the presidential debate. A columnist for another daily, Folha da Sao Paolo, says the Supreme Electoral Court's meddling with the debate "with such brazenness would have been unthinkable not long ago, something associated with banana republics. Not anymore."

Finally, this year's Comedy Wildlife Awards finalists have been announced and they do not disappoint! We look at some of those in the running for Nikon's Comedy Wildlife Awards, which will be announced in December. They include an orangutan flipping the bird, a pair of elephant seals necking each other and a macaque learning the hard way that you shouldn't ram into a tree at full speed!

You can catch our press review every morning on France 24 at 7:20am and 9:20am (Paris time), from Monday to Friday.