Brazil | Bolsonaro, who lost the election, has disappeared like ashes in the wind

Quite as if the president of Brazil had quietly changed.

Election winner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will return to office after 12 years only at the beginning of January, but he already looks like the face of Brazil in the world. He is, for example vowed to return to his country to international environmental talks at the UN climate meeting in Sinai, Egypt.

Incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro is used to keeping the public conversation in his grip with his unabashedly raucous speeches and social media updates. A month ago, however, he disappeared like ashes in the wind from representative events and social media channels.

There would still be work left until the end of the year, but the president will remain in his glass-walled official residence.

The leader of Latin America’s largest nation was not even seen at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, where the world’s most important heads of state gathered Joe Biden and Xi Jinping down to.

Far-right Bolsonaro lost for the leftist Lula in the decisive round of the Brazilian presidential election at the end of October with 49.1–50.9 percent.

Read more: Bolsonaro’s allies disgraced their entire camp at a crucial moment

Since then, Bolsonaro has spoken publicly only twice. Last weekend, he took part in his first public event since the election, a military school graduation party. He didn’t speak there either, although the vice president Hamilton Mourão was interpreted as telling him to grab the microphone.

“Aren’t you going to speak to your people? Open the game”, Mourão apparently says to Bolsonaro in a video shot of the situation, in which the speech is not heard over the music but which is lip-read interpreted in Brazilian media.

A couple of weeks ago, the vice president explained Bolsonaro’s quiet life with a bacterial skin infection, which prevented him from wearing long pants.

“Should he come here in shorts?” Mourão asked in an interview with the newspaper O Globo.

The vice president’s reports can be considered questionable, as he has also commented on the situation by calling out Bolsonaro “quite sad” and claiming that he had withdrawn “for a spiritual retreat”.

Bolsonaro has not publicly stated that he lost the election, let alone congratulated Lula. Two days after the election, he did state in his speech that he would follow the constitution.

Bolsonaro also let the judges of the Supreme Court understand that he is humbled by popularity. In addition, he has allowed his office staff to prepare the transfer of power to Lula.

Read more: “It’s over,” Bolsonaro admitted, according to the judge

Last week, however, Bolsonaro and his party still complained elections of alleged grievances to the electoral court, without success.

Millions of Bolsonaro’s supporters still believe or claim to believe in electoral fraud. A large number of them considered former President Lula’s mere candidacy to be fraudulent, as his 12-year corruption sentence was overturned after a year and a half in prison last year. The Supreme Court that made the decision considered that the court that sentenced Lula had not been impartial. The Supreme Court therefore did not actually evaluate the criminal charges on the basis of which Lula had been convicted.

The former Supporters of army captain Bolsonaro have been camped week after week in front of the barracks and headquarters of the armed forces, demanding the intervention of the soldiers before the transfer of power to Lula.

Of course, the commanders of the armed forces have not made a move in that direction. They understand that a military coup after democratic and, by all accounts, fair elections, would immediately make Brazil an international pariah.

Right after the election, Bolsonaro’s supporters protested by building barricades on roads all over Brazil. Traffic was cut off on hundreds of roads. The president called for the barriers to be dismantled, but encouraged people to show their opinion.

Since then, the protests have become smaller but more violent. Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper by they are particularly concentrated in the states of Mato Grosso, Rondônia and Santa Catarina. Blows has been made, among others, by the billionaire who supported Lula, the former minister of agriculture Blairo Maggin of the company against soybeans.

Political scientist Oliver Stuenkel evaluate news agency AFP that the president’s silence is a matter of strategy: Bolsonaro does not want to admit his defeat because he has consistently sown the public’s doubts about electoral fraud, but he also cannot explicitly deny the result, because in that case the electoral court could punish him by, for example, removing the eligibility to hold public office . Then he would not be able to run for office in the next presidential election in the fall of 2026.

“With his silence, he keeps the people on the streets”, political researcher Guilherme Casarões said news agency for AP.

“This is his huge advantage today: a very active and very radical base.”