“A people who vote for someone like Lula are a people who deserve to suffer”

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro spoke on Monday about the prospects for the 2022 elections, in which he intends to renew his mandate, and said that “a people who vote for a guy” like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “deserves to suffer”.

The reference to the ex-president came during a conversation with a small group of followers at the gates of his official residence, in which he alludes to left-wing “authoritarian regimes” which, in his opinion, has “ruined” all of South America.

Last week, Lula regained all of his political rights, which were suspended by two prison sentences overturned by the Supreme Court due to a jurisdictional dispute. For this reason, it now looks like Presidential candidate of the progressive camp for 2022.

Preliminary investigations already Sitúan as favorite against Bolsonaro, whose popularity has been declining for months, not least due to its controversial handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which is already leaving the country over 373,000 deaths and whose president insists on denying the seriousness.

Bolsonaro also slammed the cover of Veja magazine which hit the streets this weekend with a large photo of Lula under the caption “Back in the game”.

Ironically he said he only saw the cover, well does not read magazines or newspapers to “not be contaminated”, and admitted that his plan to create his own political party, baptized in advance as Alliance for Brazil and that he’s been promoting since last year, he just keeps assembling.

In order to register this party, Bolsonaro would need to collect some 500,000 voters’ signatures and meet other legal requirements he has so far been unable to meet.

He admitted that, in the face of these difficulties, now the possibility of creating this new party, which he promoted as the first “truly conservative” in the country, is “very small”.

He also explained that, for this same reason, is in talks to join another formation, which is one of the conditions imposed by Brazilian law to accept an application.

In the 2018 elections, which brought him to power, Bolsonaro joined the Social-Liberal Party (PSL), with which broke up shortly after taking office.

The president has so far not said what his next party might be, but nevertheless said he had “hope for 2022” and in approving electoral reform he is in. dealing in Congress and that proposes to end the electronic voting system, which he is wary of despite the fact that the country has been using it for more than two decades.

“I hope that with auditable voting, we can really change Brazil,” said Bolsonaro, who is promoting the project which aims to put the ballot system back in place, despite the fact that the electoral authorities argue that it promotes fraud.

Responding to comments from his supporters who proposed that the government take strong action, Bolsonaro said that “all these problems (are only solved) with a dictatorship.

“We’re not going to do this, there’s no room for that, there is no good dictatorship“, full.

Source: agencies