Jake Johnson Common Dreams
Pro-democracy campaigners urged governments around the world, including in the US, to formally recognize Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva victory in Sunday’s runoff election as his far-right challenger, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, refused to accept the results, sparking fears of political violence and another coup attempt.
“It is impossible to recognize the results. I am going to request the annulment of these elections,” said Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted last year over a plot to violently maintain power following Lula’s 2022 election win. On Sunday, the younger Bolsonaro pointed to the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision to keep polls open for two hours past the scheduled deadline as a reason to dispute the results—even though both Lula and Bolsonaro pushed for the extension, for different reasons.
Numerous world leaders, including Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, congratulated Lula on his reelection win over Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of US President Donald Trump. The US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which sounded the alarm about the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere in the Brazilian elections ahead of Sunday’s runoff, said in a statement on Sunday that “governments—including the Trump administration—should immediately recognize the outcome, to prevent a possible coup or further violence.”
“It’s likely that Flávio Bolsonaro will, like his father in late 2022, encourage his supporters to mobilize in order to try to overturn the election results, which could trigger a new wave of political violence,” said Alex Main, CEPR’s director of international policy who was in Brazil for the elections. “The Trump administration, which has close relations with the Bolsonaro family, could help defuse this threat by joining other governments in recognizing the election outcome.”
Trump, who hosted Bolsonaro at the White House in May, has yet to comment on the Brazilian election results, as of this writing. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose department led the effort to tilt the election in Bolsonaro’s favor, has also not publicly commented on Sunday’s results.
Mark Weisbrot, CEPR’s co-director, called Lula’s win “a victory for democracy and independence in the Americas against the massive intervention from the Trump administration in favor of the Bolsonaro team.”
“This included politically driven tariffs and other efforts to influence the campaign,” said Weisbrot. “Trump also tried to stop the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, who—like Trump—refused to accept his defeat in a presidential election, and was convicted of attempting a coup d’état and attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.”
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