- choice of words
- BBC News World
image source, Reuters
Bolsonaro casts his vote on October 30.
“The president has gone to sleep,” Jair Bolsonaro’s secretary curtly replied to cabinet ministers who tried to speak to the president on Sunday night, after Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) upheld the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
After criticizing the Brazilian electoral system for several weeks and repeatedly asking in the presidential debates whether he would accept the final result of the election, Bolsonaro he went to sleep without acknowledging his rival’s victory or congratulating him.
During Monday, there was speculation about Bolsonaro’s possible statement, but some media announced that it will not happen before Tuesday.
“This is the first time since 1998, when electronic ballot boxes were introduced and election results began to be counted quickly, that a candidate has avoided making public statements after his defeat was made official,” BBC Brazil’s Nathalia Passarinho said.
But those who spoke were officials and politicians allied with the president, who ruled out questioning the results that gave Lula his third presidency.
“The will of the majority expressed at the polls should never be questioned and we will make progress in building a sovereign, fair and less unequal country,” said House of Representatives Speaker and Bolsonaro ally, Arthur Lira.
Ricardo Salles, a former minister of the Bolsonaro government who was elected to this House, continued on the same path and considered that a moment for tranquility:
“The result of the most polarized election in Brazil’s history brings with it many reflections and the need to find ways to calm a country literally divided in half,” he said.
image source, Reuters
Bolsonaro’s allies rejected the possibility of questioning the results that brought Lula his third presidency.
Another former Bolsonaro minister, sergio morothe creator of the verdict for corruption against the newly elected president, which was later overturned, wrote on his Twitter that “democracy is like that”.
“The result of the election cannot be greater than the responsibility we have with Brazil. We are working for the union of those who want the good of the country,” said Moro, who was elected senator of the state of Parana.
sown doubts
As Nathalia Passarinho recalls, “during the campaign and throughout his government, Bolsonaro said more than 100 times, without presenting evidence, that the electoral system is not reliable.”
The president used his social media to spread conspiracy theories against the security of electronic ballot boxes and attacked Alexandre de Moraes, head of the TSE, whom he accused of being behind “strange things” against his re-election.
In Brazil, his answer to leaving power is still remembered: “I will leave in prison, dead or victorious.”
“So there are doubts whether he will acknowledge the results or not. Bolsonaro’s allies say he is expected to make a statement today (this Monday), but no one has gone into the content,” said a BBC Brazil reporter.
The statement did not happen.
However, on Sunday, De Moraes said the president treated him with “extreme kindness” and even gratitude when he told him he would report the results of the election contest, he reported the newspaper.
image source, Reuters
Benjamin Teitelbaum, a professor of international relations at the University of Colorado (USA), told BBC Brazil after learning of the TSE’s announcement that in the event of questioning the outcome of the election, Bolsonaro would have greater freedom of maneuver than Donald Trump had in the United States. .
“There is a particular danger in Brazil that did not exist in the United States. Because if he wants to challenge the result, he has far more resources than Trump had“.
These resources that Teitelbaum alludes to are Bolsonaro’s current influence and power in Brazil’s state bureaucracy. The state bureaucracy that in the US was instrumental in stopping the former Republican president’s attempt to challenge the results after his loss to Joe Biden.
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