RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Thousands of
Brazilians gathered outside Army
barracks in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, and other cities on Tuesday demanding the
military intervene to prevent leftist president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
taking power next year.
اضافة اعلان
“We want a better Brazil. We don’t want Lula to take
charge on January 1, we don’t want a communist country,” bank employee Lais
Nunes, 30, told AFP in Rio.
Protesters draped in green and gold waved Brazilian
flags and sung the national anthem on what was a bank holiday.
“There is various information that there was
electoral fraud. ... We can’t accept that,” added police officer Leandro de
Oliveira, 38, who claimed the national electoral tribunal was responsible for
the supposed fraud.
Supporters of outgoing right-wing President Jair
Bolsonaro have alleged fraud surrounding the electronic voting system that has
been used since 1996.
Bolsonaro himself did likewise repeatedly, without
providing any supporting evidence.
Brazil’s defense ministry has, however, produced a
report dismissing alleged inconsistencies in the electronic results, while
international observers also validated the election result.
Lula won the October 30 run-off with just under 51
percent of the vote compared to Bolsonaro’s 49 percent.
In the capital Brasilia, thousands more gathered at
the army’s headquarters with some holding up banners such as “SOS Armed Forces”
and “Audit at the polls.”
Security was stepped up in the capital and police
restricted access to the area around the presidential palace, parliament and
supreme court.
Similar protests took place straight after the
second round election last month.
Since then, many people set up camp outside the army
headquarters in Sao Paulo, where there were also protests on Tuesday, as well
as in Belo Horizonte.
Apart from a brief speech two days after his defeat,
Bolsonaro has remained tight-lipped and a recluse, with his official diary left
empty.
He has not only disappeared from public life but
also from social media, where he used to be extremely active, even running the
majority of his successful 2018 campaign online.
He is not attending the
G20 summit in Bali,
Indonesia, where Brazil is being represented by its top diplomat Carlos Franca.
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