President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) arrives on election day without having managed to internationalize his campaign against electronic voting machines and TSE (Superior Electoral Court) ministers. The recurrent attacks against the voting system turned against him and consolidated the perception among foreign governments – mainly from the US and Western Europe – that the president is an actor that destabilizes democracy in the country.
Diplomats based in Brasilia have always reported to their respective capitals Bolsonaro’s coup escalation against the polls, noting that the Chief Executive had been giving clear signs that he could contest the election result in the event of a defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) .
The concern, however, escalated on July 18, when Bolsonaro held a meeting with heads of diplomatic missions at Palácio da Alvorada. On the occasion, speaking to an audience of foreign ambassadors, the president repeated conspiracy theories about electronic voting machines, discredited the electoral system, made new threats and attacked STF (Supreme Federal Court) ministers.
“Why does a group of three people just want to bring instability to our country, do they not accept any of the suggestions from the Armed Forces, which were invited?”, Bolsonaro said at the time, referring to the most recent presidents of the TSE: Minister Alexandre de Moraes, Luís Roberto Barroso and Edson Fachin. Moraes is the current president of the court.
Ambassadors from Western countries evaluated the Sheet on the occasion that Bolsonaro used a trumpist technique — in reference to former US president Donald Trump, who, after the electoral defeat to Joe Biden, inflated lies about fraud in that country’s election and was the centerpiece of the episode that resulted in the invasion of Congress. American.
The message sent by foreigners to their governments after the episode at Alvorada was that Brazil was on the way to having its own version of the post-election conflict recorded in the US: a ruler who, if defeated, would contest the polls and trigger an institutional crisis.
Therefore, the event triggered an unprecedented international articulation of key actors in defense of the Brazilian electoral system. Shortly after, the American embassy in Brasília released a note in which it said that the Brazilian elections are a model for the world and that the US trusts in the strength of the country’s institutions.
“Brazilian elections, conducted and tested over time by the electoral system and democratic institutions, serve as a model for the nations of the hemisphere and the world,” said the diplomatic mission. A similar statement was issued by the United Kingdom Embassy in Brasilia.
Since then, the message that the US trusts the security of the Brazilian electoral process conducted by the TSE has become a constant in meetings between US and Brazilian officials. It was, for example, the subject of demonstrations by US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, at the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, held in Brasilia at the end of July.
Members of the US government privately say that they participated in different meetings to understand how electronic voting machines work and that they are convinced that the model is safe. A similar assessment of the defense of the fairness of the process is found in European embassies in Brasilia.
The expectation of a possible contestation of the results by Bolsonaro this year gave additional weight to the traditional demonstrations of the international community after the disclosure of the results, which should take place this Sunday (2).
If Lula wins in the first round, a quick recognition of important democracies is seen as key to disarming any destabilizing speech on the part of Bolsonaro.
In a normal situation, the discussion about how and when to congratulate an elected president is a more formal task, but the situation in Brazil has made the matter the order of the day in the communications of Western embassies with the respective foreign ministers.
The expectation is that, if PT obtains the majority of votes, international leaders such as the American Biden and European rulers will quickly congratulate him. In Europe, for example, Lula maintains good relations with French President Emmanuel Macron. The PT also has a historic relationship with the parties that currently lead the governments of Spain and Germany.
According to Reuters, during a recent meeting with the head of the US embassy, the charge d’affaires Douglas Koneff, the former president reinforced the thesis that a quick recognition of the result would be an important move to minimize Bolsonaro’s impetus to question the elections.
Foreign diplomats heard by the Sheet highlighted that congratulatory messages are customary and that they should be sent to the winner of the election, whoever he is. However, Bolsonaro’s record of often taking days to congratulate victories by international leaders with ideological positions far removed from his own may cause some of these politicians, out of reciprocity, to adopt a colder tone and protocol in their demonstrations in the event of reelection. .
The concern with the behavior of the international community was shared even by the former president of the TSE Edson Fachin. In May, he held a meeting with foreign ambassadors to provide information on the Brazilian voting system.
“Allow me to invite the diplomatic corps based in Brasília to seek serious and truthful information about Brazilian electoral technology, not only here at the TSE, but with national and international experts, in order to help the international community to be alert against accusations frivolous”, said the magistrate at the time.
In private conversations when he was in charge of the TSE, Fachin highlighted that quick recognition by the international community would be one of the pillars to contain any destabilizing actions after the election results were announced.
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