Brazil elections 2022: “They want to chase me out of office with a coup,” says Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Monday, June 13, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party – PL) said that “they want to give the coup” to take him out of power. He again criticized the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) and defended the simultaneous counting of votes in this year’s elections.

“They want to give me the coup to take me out of power. It’s easy to solve that right there; let’s leave the simultaneous counting on the side. What’s the problem?” Bolsonaro said in an interview with Recife’s CBN radio station.

Bolsonaro criticized the TSE president, Justice Edson Fachin, and Justice Roberto Barroso, who has also presided over the electoral court. Brazil’s president said that Fachin “owes favors” to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party – PT) and called the minister a “lulist.”

“When there is talk of a coup, two weeks ago, Minister Fachin invites around 70 ambassadors and speaks to them, indirectly, but says exactly that the president would be preparing a coup, that he wants to discredit the electoral system and says more: that upon announcing the result [of the elections] their respective heads of state should immediately recognize the winner. In other words, is the picture of the end of the 2022 elections already ready at the TSE?” he declared.

According to Bolsonaro, the government’s objective is to “dispel this doubt” through the simultaneous counting of the votes suggested by the Armed Forces to the electoral court.

According to him, the ideal solution to guarantee the security of the elections would be the printed vote. Still, the measure did not pass in Congress “by direct interference” of Justice Roberto Barroso.

“Nobody wants to give a coup. I don’t want someone to return to Brazil without popular support,” he said. Bolsonaro again noted that there was fraud in the 2018 elections to prevent a victory for him already in the first round.

Bolsonaro called “speculation” the report of the Bloomberg agency about Bolsonaro having asked for support from the US head of state, Joe Biden, for the elections this year. He affirmed that the subject treated in the bilateral meeting was “reserved”.

With information from Poder360