Brazil waits in tension for the outcome of the duel between Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro

• Election day Brazil elects president: "I don't want to accept that they take away my freedom of political expression"

Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva disputed this Sunday vote by vote the Presidency of Brazil in elections with regional and global impact.

After counting 12% of the votes, Bolsonaro was ahead of Lula by 48.21 to 43.04, although the trend was far from definitive, since most of the votes of four large states such as Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul. Votes were also missing from the northeast of the country, a region overwhelmingly favorable to the former president.

And if Jair Bolsonaro says "no"?

What if the president of one of the largest democracies in the world decides not to recognize the results of the elections held this Sunday in Brazil?

Two years after what happened in the United States of Donald Trump, the first economy in Latin America brings a "déjà vu" of those days in which Joe Biden had to arm himself with the greatest patience so that a very delicate situation would not derail.

Until the last moment, the polls showed a clear advantage for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president between 2003 and 2011, over Bosonaro.

With the possibility, even, of winning in the first round and avoiding the ballot on October 30.

Until the last moment, Bolsonaro refused to say clearly that he will accept the results of the elections.

"If the elections are clean, there is no problem, may the best win

," said the right-wing Bolsonaro this Sunday after voting at a school in the west of Rio de Janeiro.

He did it wearing a shirt of the Brazilian soccer team.

Beneath it, a bulletproof vest.

"The expectation is victory. I was well received in practically all the States. What happened yesterday in Joinville was something never seen in Brazil, so many people supporting me. I didn't see the press, but everything is fine, these are the rules of the game. it's the

(Datapueblo)," ironically the 67-year-old president, referring to DataFolha, the polling institute that demonizes day in and day out.

The problem with the "clean elections" tagline is that Bolsonaro has been claiming for months that the electronic voting system implemented in 1996 is not reliable, despite the fact that it has worked without major problems since then.

It is the same thing that Trump did in 2020: question the system in advance so that, once defeated, allege fraud.

Will Bolsonaro reach that extreme?

Andrés Malamud, an Argentine political scientist at the University of Lisbon, believes that it is something that cannot be ruled out.

"

, but the Armed Forces will hardly follow him in his denial adventure," Malamud told

.

"The key is what the military police do, which depend on state governors and are mostly Bolsonarists," he added.

Does this mean that, if necessary, the Brazilian Armed Forces would be the guarantors of democracy?

"It could be. The Brazilian Armed Forces have already been warned by the United States, through Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, that they should accept the result and respect democracy."

US 'surveillance'

Washington is closely following the Brazilian political process.

Days ago, the US Senate approved an unprecedented declaration in the relationship between Washington and Brasilia.

The text, promoted by the left wing of the Democratic Party, but without objections from the Republicans, says that the White House will immediately recognize any result endorsed by Brazilian institutions and international observers.

And, in case it were necessary, he warns that

.

Days later, Trump spoke in a video addressed to Brazilians: Bolsonaro has done a "magnificent job", he is a man "respected and admired throughout the world" and must be re-elected.

It is not what Lula thinks, who after voting in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a city on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, took a look at Brazil on Monday, the one after the elections, and took for granted his return to the Presidency.

"The most fanatical Bolsonarists will have to adapt to the majority of society," said the 76-year-old former president, who believes that "it will be easy to restore democracy and peace" in the country.

Hours earlier, Lula had shown confidence in sealing the election in the first round.

"I think this election can be decided tomorrow," the left-wing leader said during an off-schedule press conference on Saturday afternoon in downtown São Paulo.

"I am not going to comment on the polls, only the results at five in the afternoon. We have to wait for the chicken to lay the egg

," the leader of the leftist Workers' Party (PT) graphed before the last-minute polls that showed him they stand with 51% of the valid votes, in the case of the one made by Ipec, and with 50, of the Datafolha Institute.

In both polls, President Bolsonaro is 14 points behind Lula.

"If I win in the first round, I will have more time to organize the government, to talk, to travel abroad to open doors to the world for Brazil," acknowledged Lula, who looked happy and relaxed, to the point that he joked that he was dressed " like a tango singer" and that he looked like Carlos Gardel.

Janja, his wife, accompanied Lula, as well as Geraldo Alckmin, the vice-presidential candidate, and Fernando Haddad, defeated four years ago by Bolsonaro in the run-off election and today's candidate for governor of Sao Paulo.

Lula said he would ask "the 215 million Brazilians for forgiveness for what was done to this country in the last four years," while promising a new relationship with the rest of the world.

"

, of extremely active international relations. Brazil is going to once again get along with all the countries of the world, it is going to once again discuss the strengthening of the United Nations, of a fairer trade. The message to the world is that Brazil is going to be better, it is going to have the prettiest face".

"We don't want to be algorithms, we want to be human, we want to feel. Brazil has its heart and arms open for this world again."

The war in Ukraine must cease immediately, he added: "

. There is no neutrality on our part, it is the political position of ending the war. You spends years and years making highways, factories, hydraulic works and a war destroys everything so that we spend another life rebuilding ".

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