(Reuters) – President Jair Bolsonaro said on Sunday that he is expected to announce retired general Braga Netto as his running mate in the coming days to run for vice president in this year’s election race.
“I intend to announce General Braga Netto as a candidate for vice in the coming days,” Bolsonaro said in an interview with the 4 x 4 program, broadcast on his social media.
“He is a person that I greatly admire, a person who will – if we get reelection, if the population understands it – help Brazil a lot here in the coming years”, he added.
Braga Netto has always been preferred by the president, to replace the current vice president, Hamilton Mourão, but a few days ago he added the former minister of Agriculture Tereza Cristina as one of the “very popular” names for the vice-president’s vacancy. Some allies would see the former minister’s option as a way for Bolsonaro to advance in the female electorate, where he faces more resistance.
Braga Netto was Minister of the Civil House and Defense in the Bolsonaro government.
SECOND TURN
A few days after the Datafolha institute released a survey showing that if the election took place today, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would be elected in the first round in October, Bolsonaro said in the interview that he expected a second round to take place.
According to the president, if that doesn’t happen, it will be for “strange reasons”.
“I hope there will be a second round. Because Lula, even in 2002, when he was at the height of his popularity, there was a second round. It won’t be now that there won’t be a second round for reasons foreign to the interest of the Brazilian voter”.
(By Alexandre Caverni and Gabriel Araujo)
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