Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro listen to his speech at the Ministry Esplanade on Sept. 7, 2022 in Brasilia.
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is sowing doubt about the validity of the country’s electronic voting system ahead of the first round of elections, ratcheting up fears that he may refuse to accept defeat if the vote doesn’t go his way — much like his political idol, former U.S. President Donald Trump.
The first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, scheduled for Oct. 2, sees Bolsonaro come up against his political nemesis and former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in what has become Brazil’s most polarized race in decades.
Lula has consistently been polling comfortably ahead of the far-right former army captain in both the first round and an expected run-off, although some opinion polls have shown the incumbent narrowing the deficit in recent days.
“This trend of Bolsonaro narrowing the distance from Lula will keep going in the next few weeks probably,” Adriano Laureno, political and economic analyst at consultancy Prospectiva in Sao Paolo, Brazil, told CNBC via telephone.
Bolsonaro, who is running under the banner of the Liberal Party, has previously said he would be prepared to accept the result of the election whoever wins — but not if there is any indication of voter fraud.
Since coming to power in early 2019, the scandal-hit president has faced widespread criticism for his response to the coronavirus pandemic and his environmental track record, while also facing numerous calls for impeachment.
Bolsonaro has been described as the “Trump of the Tropics” by the country’s media.
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Political analysts said Bolsonaro’s criticism of the country’s respected electronic electoral system, which has never detected significant fraud, was likely designed to mobilize his supporters ahead of the first round of voting.
“Bolsonaro’s rhetoric has been that he will accept the result but only if the result is clean and transparent. So, what he is really saying is that he doesn’t rely on the electoral system, he doesn’t rely on the Supreme Court and as a result, he does not seem in the mood of relying on the electoral system as a whole,” Laureno said.
Indeed, even after winning the 2018 election after a second-round run-off, Bolsonaro vociferously made baseless allegations of voter fraud and suggested he should have won outright in the first round.
“Even an election that he won, he questions [the result]. So, imagine what will happen if he loses,” Laureno said.
Bolsonaro has long embraced comparisons to Trump, being dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics” by the country’s media. And it is thought he may now be drawing from the former U.S. president’s playbook in seeking to call into question the democratic process.
‘Climate of hatred’
A return to office for Lula, who led Latin America’s biggest country from 2003 to 2010, would mark an extraordinary political comeback.
The former metalworker was jailed in 2017 in a sweeping graft investigation that put dozens of the country’s political and business elites in prison. Lula was released in Nov. 2019 and his criminal convictions were later annulled, paving the way for him to seek a return to the presidency.
Commenting on violence on the campaign trail, da Silva described a “climate of hatred in the electoral process which is completely abnormal.”
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Ana Mauad, assistant professor of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, told CNBC that there are expectations among Lula’s supporters and within his Workers’ Party that he could win in the first round, although she does not believe this will happen.
Asked whether she then expected Lula to secure victory in the second round, Mauad replied, “Yes, definitely — if we have a second round. And I am more of a pessimist in that sense because Bolsonaro is calling his supporters and…