The CIA director William Burns urged Jair Bolsonaro to stop questioning his country’s voting system, it has been claimed, amid growing fears the Brazilian president might refuse to accept defeat in this year’s election.
Polls suggest Bolsonaro, a far-right populist famed for his adulation of Donald Trump, will struggle to secure a second term when about 150 million Brazilians head to the polls in October to choose their next leader.
Bolsonaro’s leftist rival, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is currently in pole position, and will formally announce his candidacy at a convention in São Paulo this weekend.
The possibility of a Lula victory appears to have spooked Bolsonaro, who has ratcheted up his anti-democratic rhetoric in recent weeks, reviving baseless doubts over the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system.
Such claims – part of a long-running Bolsonaro campaign to delegitimize the electoral process for political gain – have alarmed both Bolsonaro’s opponents and members of the international community.
On Thursday, Reuters claimed that last year the CIA chief had told top Bolsonaro officials their president should stop casting doubt on Brazil’s voting system during an “intimate” private encounter in the capital, Brasília.
When the meeting took place, in July last year, Bolsonaro hinted Burns’s visit was partly motivated by US concern over the political situation in neighbouring countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. However, Reuters claimed Burns had voiced concern over the situation in Brazil, telling two of Bolsonaro’s closest allies that “the democratic process was sacred, and that Bolsonaro should not be talking in that way” about the election.
“Burns was making it clear that elections were not an issue that they should mess with,” one anonymous source told Reuters, insisting the comments had not constituted a lecture.
Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, said the initiative reflected genuine US concern. “Washington is worried about Bolsonaro subverting October’s election,” Winter tweeted.
Some dismiss Bolsonaro’s attacks on Brazil’s voting system as meaningless bluster designed to fire-up his support base. During a recent visit to north-east Brazil, Bolsonaro elliptically told supporters they could be certain “the votes will be counted” and hinted they should buy themselves guns declaring: “An armed population will never be enslaved”.
But there are clear signs of concern within the Brazilian establishment that, like Trump in November 2020, Bolsonaro might refuse to concede defeat with unpredictable consequences.
Earlier this year Brazil’s top electoral authority invited European Union representatives to monitor the election – the first time such a request had been made. The invitation was reportedly withdrawn after pressure from Bolsonaro, but the fears persist.
Natália Bonavides, a congresswoman for Lula’s Workers’ party (PT), warned against underestimating Bolsonaro’s pronouncements: “I think it’s a mistake to think anything Bolsonaro says is simply bravado.”
Bonavides fears Bolsonaro could be paving the way for a South American version of the January 6 insurrection in Washington, when enraged Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after Joe Biden’s victory.
“All you have to do is look at what happened in the United States to see how what is supposedly bravado can become action … and can even get people killed,” Bonavides said in a recent interview.
“These are going to be hard, possibly violent elections – and what happens after them will be really important. Will the result be accepted? And, if we win, will there be a peaceful transition?” Bonavides asked.
