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Notes -
Time to check up on our Lusotropicalism enjoyers.
The Brazilian Presidential election ended yesterday, featuring a run-off between Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had won the previous round. Prediction markets placed his odds of winning at roughly 80%.
But Lula ended up winning, and not without controversy.
Apparently, a Supreme Court justice, and a former personal attorney of Lula's, added two extra hours to the voting period in a last second decision. There have been claims that voting in Bolsonaro-friendly areas had already been finalized and could not been restarted. One person on X claimed "it's as if voting restarted, but only in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore". I am not sure how accurate this claim is.
Bolsonaro is not accepting the results of the election. There are calls for the election results to be annulled, especially if it turns out the extra voting period was decisive. The situation is perhaps mitigated by the fact that conservatives now control a large majority of the legislature and may be able to immediately impeach Lula and, more importantly, his judges.
Perhaps someone who understands the situation can weigh in. From my outsider's view it seems that, in Brazil, individual Supreme Court justices wield nearly unchecked power and can make last second Banana Republic type decisions like opening the polls for an extra two hours. Brazilian politics feel like American ones, just more so.
The Brazilian stock market is down by 25% overnight.
I understand the reluctance to reject stolen election theories in modern first-world democracies, although I don’t agree with it.
I don’t understand the reluctance to believe in fraud when we’re talking about third-world favela nations like Brazil.
I think a lot of talking heads just don’t want to open the Pandora’s Box of acknowledging that sometimes elections do get stolen. They’re scared of what that could imply.
I have a hunch that if Bolsonaro had won, they'd have no issues calling it stolen.
I’m seeing a lot of milquetoast moderates and mainstream heads wording. They say things like “Bolsonaro got cocky on polling while Lula worked hard on turnout”. No attempt to even acknowledge fraud because to even acknowledge it is to give it sanction. Or maybe they’re naive.
Isn't that what happened with Hillary and Trump?
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