In his first words after learning the results of the elections in Brazil, in which he finished second behind Lula da Silva in the first round, Jair Bolsonaro assured that he “understands the will for change” that a part of the citizenship has “, but he has pointed out that “some changes could be for the worse”.
“Look at Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela,” Bolsonaro exemplified. “All the countries that emigrated to the left fared worse,” he said.
In a press conference held behind a fence and with a car in the background, the current Brazilian president, who will seek access to a new term on October 30 in the run-off against the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate, added: “We tried to show it in the countryside, but it doesn’t seem to have hit the mark.”
He also announced that for the second round he will try to dialogue with the population with the lowest resources, which is the one that has punished him the most in these elections in which he asks for re-election, due to the increase in food prices.
“I understand that there are many votes due to the condition of the Brazilian people, who have felt the increase in products, especially the basic food basket,” he told reporters at the Alvorada Palace, the presidential residence of Brasilia.
In that direction, he admitted: “We tried to show that other side during the campaign, but it doesn’t seem to have reached the most important layer of society.” And he accused the governors who enforced quarantines for leaving the lower class with no income in the pandemic: “We have a second round ahead where everything is the same again, the propaganda time for each side will be the same, and now we will better show the population, especially the most affected class, that the situation is the consequence of a war abroad, even of an ideological crisis ”, he indicated.
For the second round, he said, “everything is on par,” adding that he will try to better explain his proposals for a second term.
A surprising difference between Lula and Bolsonaro
With 43 percent of the valid votes, eight more than polls claimed, Bolsonaro was five points below Lula in the first round. A result that was not in the calculation of any of the pollsters and practically the majority of analysts, who expected a greater difference between the candidate of the PT and the current president.
The president, who had raised a series of doubts about the elections during the election campaign, did not immediately recognize the results. He had also suggested that he had everything to get his re-election with a clear difference and that otherwise there would be fraud.
On election day, meanwhile, he suggestively insisted that he would only recognize the elections if they were clean, without giving any other details and leaving open the possibility of denouncing them.
It is not clear what will happen in the second round of the elections. A known fact is that Lula did not get the useful vote that he had asked for, that is to say that the people will vote for him in order not to lose the vote in alternatives that have not had a chance.
We have four very complex weeks ahead of us. Lula had said in a press conference in Sao Paulo, a few hours before the elections, that he envisaged the possibility of a second round and that, if that happened, other types of elections would be held.
IS
Source: Clarin
