Brazil’s leading right-wing politician, Flávio Bolsonaro, effectively conceded defeat to the incumbent left-wing president Monday, minutes after President Donald Trump indicated he would not intervene on his behalf despite saying that Sunday’s vote “looked like another rigged election.”
Bolsonaro had initially declared he would challenge the outcome of the election, which he had been widely expected to win. He said that an extension of voting hours on Sunday, driven by poor weather and requests from both campaigns, was a “dirty trick” used to rig the election. The decision to extend polling hours was made by a Supreme Court justice, Cristiano Zanin, who was once Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s personal lawyer.
But minutes after Trump spoke to reporters Monday, Bolsonaro backed off his call to annul the election. He said he would instead file a lawsuit accusing Lula da Silva, known as Lula, of abusing the power of incumbency to influence the vote — a routine move by losing candidates that rarely succeeds in court.
“I wasn’t the one who lost; the system won,” Bolsonaro said, adding that he would “organize the opposition to build a fortress against barbarism.”
Bolsonaro also said federal police had ordered him to turn in his passport to prevent him from leaving the country. He is under investigation for corruption and money laundering. He denies wrongdoing and says he has no plans to flee.
Lula came in second to Bolsonaro in the first round of voting on Oct. 4, and the president was widely expected to lose on Sunday. His surprise victory came on the back of a major drive to turn out the vote among his supporters.
Trump expressed skepticism about the results on Monday, just before Bolsonaro effectively conceded.
“It looked like another rigged election, frankly. I didn’t take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world,” Trump told reporters, a day after Lula achieved his come-from-behind victory.
“Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me,” Trump said. “I watched the election and it looked so corrupt, so terrible.”
Trump did not formally embrace Bolsonaro ahead of the vote but has long been allied with his father, who is now under house arrest. Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of a failed 2023 attempt to overthrow the results of a presidential election to keep himself in power after Lula won.
The younger Bolsonaro initially called for the annulment of the election, but his effort won little support Monday. The head of Brazil’s electoral court, Kassio Nunes Marques, who was appointed by Bolsonaro’s father, said Monday that the extension had not affected the outcome.
A close ally of the younger Bolsonaro, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy, said the candidate met with allies Monday morning and decided to drop the push to annul the election because most of the country’s authorities had already recognized the results. Lula’s win was big — a margin of 4.4 million votes — and the chances of success were slim, the person said.
The planned lawsuit seeking to remove Lula from office on grounds of abuse of power will be based on the president’s announcement of an increase in the country’s main social welfare benefit shortly before the runoff, the ally said. But the person described the legal challenge as routine and said the campaign does not expect it to produce results.
Sunday’s election was a blow to White House efforts to install a string of right-wing leaders sympathetic to Trump across Latin America. They have been successful over the last year and a half, but Brazil is by far the most populous country in the region, and Lula has been a vocal opponent of Trump’s agenda.
Lula won 51.8 percent to 48.2 percent, and pulled in more than 10 million more votes than he did in the first round.
Dias reported from São Paulo.
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