MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Boric hopes LatAm would not tolerate a coup in Brazil if Bolsonaro loses

In addition to Bolsonaro, Boric singled out El Salvador's Bukele as an authoritarian leader

Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font Thursday said he hoped Latin America would stage a “joint reaction” if a coup d'état takes place in next month's presidential elections in Brazil.

Boric fears that the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro may not recognize the results citing the unreliability of the electronic voting system.

In an interview with Time magazine, Boric was asked about how he would react if Bolsonaro were to question the results of those elections. He replied that Latin America would have to “react united” to avoid episodes like the one in Bolivia in 2019.

“If there is an attempt like the one that happened, for example, in Bolivia, where a fraud that did not exist was denounced and ended up validating a coup d'état, Latin America will have to react united to avoid it,” the Chilean president has quoted as saying.

Ties between Chile and Brazil are not going through their best moment after Bolsonaro took four days to congratulate Boric on his victory in the elections and underlined that nearly half of Chile's population had not turned up.

Bolsonaro then made a few comments regarding the Chilean president has been under heavy press attacks lately. These onslaughts led to Bolsonaro being summoned to testify before a Chilean court, which he is yet to do.

Boric also addressed the human rights uproars in Nicaragua and also in El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele.

“I am a deeply democratic person of the left and I believe that the authoritarian drifts that existed in the left did great harm not only to the idea of the left but also to its people. I am above all a democrat,” he emphasized. “When the defense of human rights is partial, it loses legitimacy. I have criticized the authoritarian tendencies of the left in the region,” Boic also said with Bukele in mind.

The Chilean leader insisted Bukele has been repeatedly reluctant to visit other countries on official trips. “That's suspicious,” Boric said.

“From what I have studied and my conversations with Salvadorans, yes there is an authoritarian drift in dealing with a really serious problem: gangs. I know that it is a really difficult situation and that it must be confronted with great determination, but that cannot be done by undermining democracy,” Boric stressed.