(Sao Paulo) Far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a candidate for re-election, said on Friday that he would recognize a possible defeat in the second round of the presidential election on October 30 provided that “nothing abnormal” occurs during of the vote.
Posted at 11:03 p.m.
“Today everyone says that my acceptance (among the people) is much greater than that of my opponent (ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva). But let’s leave the ballot boxes…let’s leave that to the electoral transparency commission,” Bolsonaro said in a live interview on SBT, where he was asked if he would accept the result in the event of a setback.
“If the transparency commission, in which the armed forces also participate, shows nothing abnormal, there is no reason to doubt the outcome of the elections,” added the former army captain who, in the months preceding the election, raised on several occasions and without proof the possibility of “fraud” through the electronic ballot boxes used to vote in Brazil.
He had gone so far as to threaten not to recognize the results if he lost against Lula, candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT, left).
Lula has long been the big favorite in the polls, with a 21-point lead over Jair Bolsonaro in May, according to the Datafolha institute.
But the outgoing president created a surprise in the first round of the election, on October 2, by obtaining 43% of the vote, only five points less than Lula, a gap much smaller than what the opinion polls predicted. .
In the home stretch of the campaign, Mr. Bolsonaro silenced his attacks on electronic voting and postponed them against the polling institutes, which he accused of “lying” to favor his main opponent.
The polls still place Lula in the lead, with 49% against 45% for Jair Bolsonaro according to Datafolha, with 1% undecided and 4% blank or null votes.
The interview in which Mr. Bolsonaro participated this Friday replaced what was to be the second debate between the two candidates of the second round, in which Lula decided not to participate because of “incompatibility with his campaign calendar”, according to the organizers.