Almost two years ago, at the beginning of November 2020, the United States lived days of anticipation until the loser of the presidential election recognized the result and began the process of transition to the opponent who took the lead at the polls.
At the time, it took 16 days between Joe Biden’s victory and the official start of the government transition, at the time occupied by Donald Trump.
The deadline, however, was marked by a long silence until the Republican recognized the Democrat’s victory — Trump took more than a week to, making it clear his grudging, write two posts on his Twitter, one admitting defeat and the other backing down.
The scenario bears a certain resemblance to the silence of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) about the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the elections this Sunday (30). Trump’s ally, the Brazilian has not yet made any public demonstration admitting defeat.
On November 7, 2020, when the US election result was announced, Trump went to play golf in the community of Sterling, Virginia, about 30 minutes from Washington. At the time, while Americans were anxious to know the winner of the election, the Republican was just a 74-year-old man, recently recovered from Covid-19, wearing a cap that read “Make America Great Again”. great again) and playing your favorite sport.
While the American president was having fun, however, Pennsylvania updated the state’s voting numbers and slammed Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s lawyers were quick to speak out and promised to continue the flurry of lawsuits to try to reverse the results, particularly those in Pennsylvania, where, they say, more than 600,000 ballots were rigged. The Republican remained silent.
Over the days, Joe Biden repudiated the Republican’s action and called Trump’s refusal a shame. At the time, however, the Democrat believed that his opponent’s stance would not have many consequences for the transition process – little did he know that in less than two months a Trump-inflated crowd would invade the Capitol and carry out one of the biggest attacks on American democracy. .
On November 15, 2020, the then American president said that Biden “won because the election was rigged”, without naming the rival, only to go back an hour later and claim that he “didn’t recognize anything” and that the Democrat was only considered winner for the “fake news press”.
From the Bolsonaro family, the only public manifestations until the publication of this text were by Michelle, the president’s wife — who made a post with a psalm from the Bible on her Instagram, without mentioning the elections — and by Senator Flávio, the politician’s eldest son, who in a social network spoke of raising his head and “not giving up on Brazil”.
In the US, the formal transition of government began after Trump blocked Biden’s team from accessing information and resources for the exchange of power for more than two weeks. Even when he finally relented, the Republican said he would continue to contest the election results, which he argued without evidence — as he does to this day — were rigged.
Biden had more than two months between the official start of the transition and his inauguration on January 20, 2021.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro’s cabinet did not adopt, in a coordinated way, previous preparations for a scenario of change of government, according to interlocutors heard by the Sheet. The subject of an eventual transition was considered a taboo behind the scenes.
It is still unclear how much time Lula will have to prepare the ground for his inauguration, scheduled for January 1.
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