Jair Bolsonaro has maintained a thunderous silence after losing by almost two points the presidential elections this Sunday. He has not only become the first Brazilian president to fail in his attempt to be re-elected. He is also the first who does not communicate with the winner to greet him immediately and make himself available to the incoming government. According to Bela Megale, from the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Or Balloonwent to sleep on Sunday with “feelings of outrage“by the verdict of the polls. His closest ministers were finally able to talk to the president on Monday and asked him to admit his misstep to safeguard political capital that has resulted in nothing less than 58 million votes. According to the São Paulo newspaper Condition, collaborators of the president wrote a speech in which the position of the Executive would be finally fixed. There would be no shortage of reproaches for the way in which the retired captain was treated in the media and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
“Thanks to each one of those who helped us rescue patriotism, who prayed, prayed, took to the streets, gave their sweat for the country that is doing well and gave Bolsonaro the biggest vote of his life! head and let’s not give up our Brazil! God commands”, said Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, waiting for the words of his father. The uniformed men have been silent. Throughout the election campaign, Bolsonaro had floated the threat of a military response, citing a lack of transparency at the polls. The Armed Forces did not issue any message that supported the theory of the defeated president. For now, military adherence to the Constitution is strict.
The elections passed, but the word “transition” did not seem to be part of the government’s language. Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva is, in this sense, facing an unprecedented situation. When he won the 2002 elections he had the full collaboration of the outgoing Administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. One day before the most disputed elections in that country, the team of the incoming president did not know how he would access detailed information on the true situation of the public accounts, the projects in progress of the far-right government and other issues of institutional functioning. Under a 2010 law, signed by Lula himself, a temporary office in Brasilia so that this mechanism can be put into operation.
Obrigado to each one who helped us to rescue or patriotism, who prayed, prayed, was for these streets, from your dear country that is giving certainty to Bolsonaro for the highest vote of his life! We are going to stand up and we are not going to give up in our Brazil! God no command!
– Flavio Bolsonaro #B22 (@FlavioBolsonaro) October 31, 2022
Two points from the miracle
Bolsonaro’s rage found its explanation in social networks. The far right he feels that he was very close to remaining in the Planalto Palace. Youtubers and agitators say that if the campaign had been extended for a week, as Bolsonaro’s sons had suggested, without finding an echo in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and in the moderate parties, the result would have been different. In fact, the retired captain went from 43% of the votes in the first turn to 49%. If at the beginning of October, Lula had taken six million votes ahead of him, on Sunday it ended with a difference of two million in favor of the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT). Bolsonaro came to turn unfavorable results in 2,191 cities.
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While the still president refrained from his provocative loquacity, others spoke on his behalf, including evangelical pastor JB Carvalho. “We have faced the Roman Empire, to communism, to tyrants, to the forces of darkness,” he said, as if anticipating a holy war. “Let’s rejoice, this man who wins only proves that the scriptures are being fulfilled. He is he apocalypse“, he assured himself on Sunday at a ceremony at the Community of Nations temple in Brasilia, according to Folha from São Paulo.
truckers protest
For now, and as a test of the hostilities that could take place as of 2023, when the extreme right dominates Congress, truckers who sympathize with the retired captain blocked at least 70 points on roads in rejection of Lula’s electoral victory. It is estimated that the most radical Bolsonarismo represents 30% of Brazilians who opted for the retired captain at the polls. These groups have not only populated social networks with calls to violence. Among them are the main arms buyers since 2018. Sectors of the policeman and the paramilitary militias of Rio de Janeiro are part of the hard and belligerent nucleus of the extreme right that, from 2023, will no longer have state support.