By Oliver Griffin and Eduardo Simões
SAO PAULO, Oct 26 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump said on Monday that leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s surprise win in Brazil’s presidential vote “looked like another rigged election,” although the party of defeated right-winger Flavio Bolsonaro later acknowledged the result.
The son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat in Sunday’s presidential election, saying he would seek the annulment of Lula’s victory after the Supreme Court extended voting by two hours.
Later on Monday, however, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party said it acknowledged the runoff result in a statement signed by the party’s head Valdemar Costa Neto.
“We recognize the presidential election results,” Costa Neto said. “But we believe the issues raised need to be properly clarified.”
Bolsonaro, who has not commented publicly since his party’s statement, said earlier on Monday he would comply with a federal police order to hand over his passports following a visit to his father, who is under house arrest, and denied he was planning to flee Brazil.
Trump did not endorse Bolsonaro ahead of the vote, although Reuters has reported that officials from his State Department led a campaign to return the Bolsonaros to power.
“I didn’t take sides, but it looked like another rigged election,” Trump told reporters, without providing any evidence. “It looked very bad to me.”
Bolsonaro lost to Lula by over 4 million votes, a clear result that it will be challenging for him to overturn. Fewer than 35,000 votes, or some 0.03% of the total, were cast in the extra two hours of voting ordered by the Supreme Court, according to an analysis of electoral records by Insper professor Pedro Burgos.
“I just think it had a very bad look, the election, the way it was tabulated,” Trump said. “The extension given was very strange.”
Vice President Geraldo Alckmin later defended Brazil’s electoral system, saying in a TV interview with Rede Vanguarda that Trump’s remarks were “totally wrong” and “unfounded.”
Neither Trump nor Jair Bolsonaro accepted their election losses in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Brazil’s former president was handed a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after losing to Lula.
Analysts do not expect Flavio Bolsonaro to be able to build the same anti-democratic movement as his father in 2022.
MARKETS ROILED BY LULA WIN
World leaders have already widely congratulated Lula on his unprecedented fourth mandate, which was greeted with dismay by investors who had been betting on a Bolsonaro win.
Brazil’s real fell 8.1% against the dollar in its biggest one-day drop since 2002, while the stock exchange marked its steepest one-day fall since 2020.
“The initial selloff could moderate as election-related positions are unwound, but investors will demand convincing fiscal commitments before rebuilding exposure,” said Pantheon Macroeconomics’ chief Latin America economist Andres Abadia.
Lula’s victory defied polls, precedent and global anti-incumbent sentiment to put the brakes on a wave of right-wing election victories across Latin America. He trailed Bolsonaro in the first round, but managed to convince voters to come out for him in the runoff.
Pollsters said a higher-than-expected turnout and an improved social media campaign helped power Lula to victory.
During the campaign, Lula pointed to his track record of cutting poverty and inequality while also highlighting record-low unemployment, illiteracy and deforestation, but his fourth term may prove challenging.
He will face an uphill battle for his agenda in a Congress packed with Bolsonaro allies after a surge of conservative voters in the first round of the general election pushed the Brazilian legislature further to the right.
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin, Luciana Magalhaes, Gabriel Araujo, Eduardo Simoes, Lisandra Paraguassu and Andre Romani in Sao Paulo, Ricardo Brito in Brasilia, and Trevor Hunnicutt and Costas Pitas in Washington; editing by Brad Haynes, Gabriel Stargardter, Andrea Ricci, Rosalba O’Brien and Lincoln Feast.)
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