The China Mail - The young lawmaker making Brazil's Lula 'king of the selfie'

Half a million people voted the 21-year-old into the Chamber of Deputies on October 4, during elections that were otherwise a tough moment for the Brazilian left.

Lula trailed right-wing Flavio Bolsonaro in the first round of the presidential vote, receiving 45 percent to the senator's 47 percent.

The political right also made huge gains in Congress.

With jailed ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro's son Flavio the favorite to win the October 25 runoff, the left is revamping its social media strategy and has turned to Ana Elisa for advice.

Two days after her triumphant electoral debut, she and a group of other successful influencers-turned-candidates headed for Brasilia.

Lula "is someone you can tell is always open to listening, to hearing criticism -- obviously constructive criticism," Ana Elisa told AFP at a park in Divinopolis, her hometown in southeastern Brazil.

The 80-year-old leader doesn't have a cell phone and sarcastically refers to its users as the "finger-tapping generation."

But his tone has changed slightly following input from younger leftists, and the incumbent now calls himself the "king of the selfie."

"Our ideas were very well received. We want to help him win the runoff," said Ana Elisa, who has more than five million Instagram followers.

- Homegrown politics -

The law student added she would never have been able to access higher education if it weren't for Lula's social policies.

Donning t-shirts bearing the slogan of her own brand, "Vista Politica," Ana Elisa began pulling in viewers with her videos criticizing Bolsonarismo.

It all kicked off two years ago, when she "started doing politics in my mom's bedroom with a cell phone," one Instagram clip recounts.

Soon afterwards, she ventured into the streets in search of content.

In one video, she accompanies a food delivery worker through his day to explain a proposal for social protection for digital platform workers.

Lighter topics, such as her love for the US television show "Grey's Anatomy," get airtime too.

The 21-year-old will move to Brasilia in February, leaving behind the family home she shares with her mother, grandmother and younger brother.

In a legislature dominated by the right, she has pledged to defend free public transportation and housing subsidies for university students.

- Left 'lagging' online -

Some of her right-wing counterparts gained prominence via social media too, including conservative lawmaker Lucas Pavanato, 28, who received three million votes.

The left is "lagging behind" digitally, Ana Elisa said.

The right "understood long before the left that there is no longer any separation between social media and the street," she explained in a video shared almost 16,000 times on Instagram.

"On the other side, they call them a political force; over here, you call them an influencer. That's why we are losing the debate," she added.

The young woman has also denounced alleged election "interference" by US social media platforms.

Brazil's electoral court on Monday gave Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, 24 hours to prove that it is giving equal treatment to the Lula and Bolsonaro campaigns.

Lula's political party had filed a complaint against Meta for limiting the distribution of the candidate's content on its platforms.

The company has denied taking any actions to favor one side in the election, but previously said that some of Lula's campaign ads had been mistakenly deactivated due to technical errors not isolated to Brazil.

"Despite all this, we need to make an effort" to bridge the gap between Lula and Bolsonaro ahead of the runoff, Ana Elisa insisted.

A Datafolha institute sruvey last week placed the incumbent in a technical tie with his right-wing rival, with Lula grabbing 49 percent of voting intentions versus 51 percent.

That is a smaller gap than a week earlier, when Datafolha recorded a difference of four percentage points.

C.Fong--ThChM