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Bolsonaro Supporters Try to ‘Paralyze’ Brazil as They Wait for Him to Speak
Bolsonaro Administration Agrees to Accept Loss Two Days After Election
(about 5 hours later)
Brazil entered its second day of silence from President Jair Bolsonaro following his election loss as his supporters around the country blocked roadways and other infrastructure with demands that the election be overturned.
BRASÍLIA — Two days after losing Brazil’s presidential election, President Jair Bolsonaro agreed to a transition of power on Tuesday, easing fears that the far-right leader would contest the results after warning for months that the only way he would lose would be if the vote was stolen.
On Tuesday, protesters partially blocked the highway leading to the nation’s largest airport in São Paulo, forcing the cancellation of at least 25 flights. Protesters also set up hundreds of blockades across the rest of the country, disrupting traffic, according to the federal highway police.
However, Mr. Bolsonaro did not concede the loss in his own words. After Mr. Bolsonaro’s brief public address that criticized the left, the president’s chief of staff said that the government would hand over power to the incoming administration.
The demonstrators said they were trying to shut down or “paralyze” the country in order to draw intervention from the military, hoping it was a path to overturn the results of Sunday’s election, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, defeated the far-right incumbent.
“President Bolsonaro has authorized me — when requested, based on the law — to start the transition process,” Mr. Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, said in a brief comment following the president’s speech.
Echoing baseless claims from Mr. Bolsonaro ahead of the vote, protesters claimed in interviews and in posts on social media that the vote was stolen — and that they believed they were carrying out what the president wanted.
Mr. Bolsonaro thanked his supporters but did not address his loss. “I was always labeled undemocratic,’’ he said. “Unlike my accusers, I played within the limits of the constitution.”
“We want to hear from our president,” said Reginaldo de Moraes, 45, an evangelical pastor standing on the side of the highway leading to São Paulo’s airport. “He has to speak, and we are going to listen. He is our president.”
Since his election loss on Sunday, thousands of his supporters have blocked hundreds of highways across Brazil in a bid to “paralyze” the country and somehow overturn the election. Mr. Bolsonaro said those protests “are the fruit of the indignation and feelings of injustice in the electoral process,” he said.
Mr. Bolsonaro has, so far, not spoken publicly. For years, the president has attacked Brazil’s election system as rife with fraud, despite a lack of evidence, and said repeatedly in recent months that he would only accept an election that he believed was “clean.”
But he urged his supporters to halt disruptions. “Peaceful demonstrations will always be welcome,” he said. “But our methods cannot be those of the left, like property invasion, destruction of goods and restrictions on the right to come and go.”
His silence left one of the world’s largest democracies on edge that there might not be a peaceful transition of power.
Still, his decision to transfer power was welcome news for Brazil’s democracy. The president has long attacked Brazil’s election system as rife with fraud, despite a lack of evidence, and ahead of Sunday’s election, he had suggested that the left was trying to rig the vote.
Several government ministers urged the president to concede on Monday, according to three government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings.
So when the talkative politician suddenly went silent for two days, the nation was kept on edge, wondering if he would dispute his loss.
By Monday evening, Mr. Bolsonaro had retired to the presidential palace to finish drafting a public response, according to one of the officials, a senior member of Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration. The president planned to release that response on Tuesday, though what exactly he would say and when remained unclear, the senior official said.
Now, Brazil’s government can fully begin working toward a transition to President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist former president who is returning to lead Brazil 12 years after his first administration. During his time out of office, Mr. da Silva served 17 months in prison on corruption charges that were later thrown out.
The officials stressed that the president would make the final decision.
Mr. Bolsonaro did not mention Mr. da Silva on Tuesday.
The result was confusion inside the government and across the nation. Even as the president stayed silent, his chief of staff spoke with two top advisers to Mr. da Silva, according to the president-elect’s spokesman, who added that officials in Mr. Bolsonaro’s government were giving signs that there would be a normal transition.
One of Mr. da Silva’s primary challenges as president will be dealing with Brazil’s deep division. Mr. Bolsonaro received 58.2 million votes, or 49.1 percent of the ballots, the closest presidential contest in the 34 years of Brazil’s modern democracy.
While the protests by Bolsonaro supporters were largely nonviolent and were smaller than the mass demonstrations that some officials had feared ahead of the vote, the disruptions were expanding.
Many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters consider Mr. da Silva a criminal and many have lost faith in the integrity of Brazil’s elections — both views stoked by the far-right leader.
The federal highway police said that there were 220 active blockades in 21 of Brazil’s 27 states as of Tuesday morning, and that they had broken up 288 blockades since the election ended.
That radicalization was illustrated by the unrest across Brazil. As of Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters had set up 227 active blockades of roads in 22 of Brazil’s 27 states, according to the federal highway police. The police said they had cleared 330 other blockades since the election ended.
In some cases, it appeared that some law enforcement officials were not intervening in the protests.
Flávia Milhorance contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.
On Monday, three federal highway police officers stood and watched as protesters blocked the main highway between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil’s two largest cities.
In Rio de Janeiro, the federal highway police and state police spoke with protesters before they partially blocked a key bridge linking the city with a neighboring area. The police watched for two hours before the protesters dispersed amid heavy rains. Posts and videos on social media also showed the federal highway police not taking immediate action against blockades across the country.
Late Monday, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, ordered the federal highway police and state police to clear all federal highways. Under the order, the director of the federal highway police faced arrest and a $20,000 fine if his agency did not comply.
Around the same time, hundreds of protesters had begun blocking the road to São Paulo’s main airport, Guarulhos International Airport, causing long lines of traffic and forcing airlines to cancel 12 flights on Monday and 13 flights on Tuesday.
Just after 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the federal highway police sprayed a chemical agent toward dozens of protesters who were still blocking two of the three lanes of the airport highway, clearing the blockade. Traffic was flowing within minutes. The police arrested one protester. Demonstrators then stood on the side of the highway waving flags, as authorities warned them to stay off the roadway.
Reginaldo de Moraes, the evangelical pastor who helped lead the protest, said he and other demonstrators were demanding that the military investigate the voter fraud they believed rigged Sunday’s election.
“We want the truth about the voting machines,” he said. “We don’t believe them, and we want the Army to take over and count the votes correctly.”
Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice, had already issued an order against the federal highway police earlier this week. On Election Day, federal highway officers stopped at least 550 buses carrying voters to polls, questioning people aboard.
Alexandre de Moraes, who is also Brazil’s elections chief, then ordered the agency’s director to explain why. Election officials said the traffic stops delayed some voters, but did not prevent anyone from voting.
The head of the federal highway police has posted extensively about Mr. Bolsonaro on his official Instagram account. That includes a post on the eve of the election that urged people to vote for Mr. Bolsonaro, according to O Globo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers. (The kind of message he posted automatically disappears from Instagram after 24 hours and was no longer visible.)
While the protesters are calling for military intervention, a military spokesman said on Tuesday that the blockades were a police matter.
The president, Brazil’s Congress or the Supreme Court have the power to order the military to contain crowds in emergencies, and some government officials and academics had worried before the election that Mr. Bolsonaro could try to use that power if he refused to concede. As of Tuesday, the military had not commented publicly on the election.
Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines for years, claiming that they are vulnerable to fraud. As a result, three out of four of his supporters trust the machines only a little or not at all, according to various polls in recent months.
There is no credible evidence of fraud in the voting machines since they were introduced in 1996, and independent security experts said that while the machines are not perfect, multiple layers of security prevent fraud or errors.
Jack Nicas and André Spigariol reported from Brasília and Laís Martins reported from São Paulo. Victor Moriyama contributed reporting from São Paulo, Ana Ionova from Rio de Janeiro and Flávia Milhorance from Barra Mansa, Brazil.
