Sao Paulo, Brazil – As the results of Brazil’s October 30 presidential runoff rolled in, confirming a slender victory for left-wing icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his far-right opponent was nowhere to be found.
Allies who sought to commiserate with defeated President Jair Bolsonaro were reportedly told that he had gone to bed after the results came in, neither thanking his 58 million supporters nor congratulating the new president-elect.
This silence continued for almost two days. Heads of state from the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Italy had all congratulated Lula on his victory by the time Bolsonaro gathered the country’s media for his first public post-election appearance.
In a curt speech lasting no more than two minutes, he failed to acknowledge defeat and did not mention Lula’s name. Instead, he saluted small groups of putschist protesters who had gathered around the country, calling for the military to annul the election results and keep Bolsonaro in power.
Crucially, there were some signs of concession. After Bolsonaro vacated the lectern, his chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, announced that the president had given his approval to begin the government transition process. And before beginning his address to the media, Bolsonaro was heard saying: “They are going to miss us.”
“Bolsonaro was never planning on conceding defeat,” Mario Sergio Lima, a senior Brazil analyst at the Medley Advisors consultancy, told Al Jazeera. “At first, I think he was genuinely stunned that he had lost, as he had surrounded himself with yes men and believed he was going to win. But after that, the prolonged silence was a way to see if the street protest movement would pick up steam.”
In the days following the vote, the countrywide protests by Bolsonaro supporters blocked major highways, as demonstrators openly called for a military coup.
“Bolsonaro has never abided by the rules,” political scientist Beatriz Rey, a visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University, told Al Jazeera. “He spent most of his presidency criticising the voting system; of course he wasn’t going to concede defeat.”
Balancing act
Bolsonaro had surely hoped that his years of attempts to discredit Brazil’s electoral system would have led to more widespread popular anger at his defeat. But while the demonstrations caused significant disruption, even blocking access to Brazil’s busiest…