MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil: Lula likens Bolsonaro to former US President Donald Trump

Bolsonaro needs to be prepared to know that he is going to lose the elections, Lula said

After staging an unprecedented military parade in front of the Planalto Palace, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro was heavily criticized by his predecessor and electoral rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said he wants to imitate Donald Trump.

The PT leader said Bolsonaro had the same destabilizing attitude of former US President Trump, as tanks and armored vehicles passed by while the House of Deputies was about to vote on the return to paper ballot voting for next year.

Bolsonaro has even threatened there might be no elections in 2022 if the current electronic system was not supplemented with a more reliable, easy-to-monitor paper ballot, something which eventually the Lower House rejected later in the day.

During the parade, a military officer gave Bolsonaro an invitation to attend maneuvers by the Navy, with the support of the Army and Aeronautics, to be carried out in Formosa, a town in the neighboring state of Goias. These exercises in Formosa have been carried out since 1988.

”The pathetic scene of receiving the invitation in front of the Planalto Palace was not performed by former president José Sarney (1985-1990), nor Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002), nor Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), nor Michel Temer (2016-2018),“ said Lula.

”When Bolsonaro insists with that of the paper ballot, he is trying to generate confusion, like Trump in the United States, we are not going to accept that. Bolsonaro needs to be prepared to know that he is going to lose the elections,“ Lula added Tuesday morning.

Bolsonaro presided over the military parade around 8 a.m. along with the commanders of the Armed Forces, Defense Minister General Walter Souza Braga Netto and several members of cabinet.

The leftwing Lula insisted that “if a military man wants to do politics, he should resign from office, take off his uniform and be a candidate.”

Meanwhile, Senator Omar Aziz of the conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD) said that “every public man should fear ridicule, but Bolsonaro has no limits, as was evident in this pathetic scene today.”

The military ceremony “shows only a threat from someone weak who knows they have already lost” the vote on the reform of the electoral system, said Aziz, who chairs the Parliamentary Commission that investigates alleged irregularities in the management of the coronavirus pandemic. “Bolsonaro has no right to threaten democracy,” he added.

Senator Renan Calheiros, rapporteur for the Parliamentary Investigations Commission, said that “the military has to put aside the follies of Bolsonaro.”

After the military parade, the vehicles were parked in front of the Ministry of Defense, on Explanada de los Ministerios avenue, a few blocks from the Presidency, Congress and the Federal Supreme Court.