Without denying or confirming the content of a report by the Bloomberg agency, which claimed that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) would have asked his American counterpart Joe Biden for help to be reelected in the October presidential elections, the White House told BBC News Brasil , through a spokesperson, who hopes that “candidates respect the constitutional outcome of the electoral process” and reaffirmed “full confidence” in the country’s election system.
“Broadly speaking, we have complete confidence in Brazil’s electoral system. In a consolidated democracy like Brazil’s, we expect candidates to respect the constitutional outcome of the electoral process,” said a White House spokesman.
The demonstration takes place less than a week after the first meeting between Bolsonaro and Biden, in Los Angeles, on the sidelines of the ninth Summit of the Americas, which the Americans were hosting.
During the first ten minutes of the meeting, open to the press, the American president made a point of mentioning that the South American country has “strong electoral institutions” and an “inclusive democracy”.
The comments were in response to Bolsonaro’s repeated claims — with no evidence — that electronic voting machines would be unreliable, that the military should be involved in counting votes and that he might not accept the outcome of the election that takes place in less than four months. In electoral polls, the president, who is seeking reelection, has appeared in second place in popular preference.
In front of Biden and the press, Bolsonaro said that “I am sure that [as eleições] in this democratic style. I arrived for democracy and I’m sure that when I leave the government, it will also be in a democratic way”.
However, he mentioned again that “we want clean, reliable and auditable elections, so that there is no doubt after the election”, a typical argument he has been repeating when accusing the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of not guaranteeing the security and reliability of the process, whose results, Bolsonaro repeats, would not be verifiable, something that the TSE refutes.
After those initial minutes, however, the conversation went on for more than half an hour. In the final part, Bolsonaro broke protocol and asked to be alone with Biden, without the eight assistants who accompanied each of the leaders in the room.
In the end, only the presidents, a translator and the two heads of foreign policy of the countries were left in the room. Bolsonaro said that what was discussed there, when both representatives were “less than a meter apart” and “without masks”, was a “state secret”.
But, according to a Bloomberg report published four days ago, Bolsonaro took advantage of the more intimate atmosphere to ask Biden to help him get reelected in Brazil.
The American vehicle attributes the information to “people familiar with the matter”, claims that Bolsonaro referred to Lula as a “radical leftist” and “contrary to American interests” and says that Biden simply changed the subject at the request.
Asked by BBC News Brasil about whether they would confirm such a report, both the White House, the Department of State and the US National Security Council avoided denying or confirming the content of the report.
“The United States has on several occasions expressed confidence in Brazil’s democratic institutions and respect for Brazil’s strong record of free and fair elections,” a State Department spokesperson told BBC News Brazil.
Bolsonaro, on Tuesday (14), denied that he had made such a request. “There is no such thing. There was an expanded bilateral meeting, with 20 people present, 30 minutes of conversation and then I asked for a private one with Joe Biden. [a Bloomberg] does not cite sources, ‘according to such people’. What I talked about with Biden doesn’t come out of me, or the [ministro das Relações Exteriores] Carlos France. It’s speculation,” Bolsonaro said in an interview with CBN Recife radio.
‘United States does not tolerate intervention’
Both during the bilateral conversation and in his speech at the Summit, Bolsonaro tried to show Americans that not only Brazil, but also his government, are aligned with the interests of the White House.
While Biden was openly criticized by other Latin leaders for having chosen to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the Summit, Bolsonaro placed himself before the American president as a bulwark against the advance of authoritarian leftist regimes on the continent, something valued in Washington.
On the other hand, the Biden administration is dissatisfied with Bolsonaro’s increasing attacks on elections in Brazil and sees in the Brazilian’s behavior echoes of the stance adopted by Republican Donald Trump, which led to the invasion of the US Congress in January 2021.
According to State Department spokeswoman Kristina Rosales, the day after the meeting, Biden made it clear to Bolsonaro that “the United States does not tolerate, does not accept intervention in the electoral system anywhere.”
“We understand very well that there are elections in Brazil in October, in the coming months. We understand very much the concern of the Brazilian people with this issue. So much so that at the meeting, President Bolsonaro himself said that he respects democracy, that he will respect the result. We are going to take seriously this statement made by President Bolsonaro yesterday [dia 9]”, said Rosales.
After the meeting and before departing the US, Bolsonaro met with supporters in Orlando, Florida, and again renewed his allegations of mistrust over the elections in Brazil. Bolsonaro said that the only way to avoid “problems” – such as violent acts in the style of the Capitol invasion – would be for the TSE to dialogue with the Armed Forces to carry out the election and cited a recent sentence by the PDT presidential candidate, Ciro Gomes, for whom “if Lula wins, Brazil dawns at war”.
This text was originally published here.
