The former Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro presented himself this Wednesday as the "leader" of the country in his first public message after completing his flight to the United States, after losing the presidential elections held last weekend.
The senator has circulated a letter on his social media, an edited version of an earlier missive that he himself deleted and in which, in addition to defining himself as "leader", he claimed the position of "elected president of Brazil".
"I address the Brazilian people and the international community as the leader of Brazil", begins Bolsonaro's lengthy statement, in which he maintains that there was electoral fraud in favor of his adversary and winner of the election, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After presenting himself as a victim of a "coup d'état" and a "witch hunt", he announces that he intends to organize an "opposition" from exile inspired by the Venezuelan experience.
Bolsonaro left Brazil for the United States via Argentina and Ecuador, after the Federal Police canceled his passport when the deadline set by Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes to hand it over expired and imposed on him the ban on leaving the country, within a case for alleged money laundering through betting houses.
Lula's victory, a "mathematical impossibility"
The son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro —currently under house arrest for heading a coup plot against Lula at the end of 2022— considers the turn that allowed Lula to prevail in the October 25 runoff to be "a mathematical impossibility".
Flávio Bolsonaro particularly questions a Federal Supreme Court ruling "taken above the powers of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE)" that "extended voting hours at the last minute, after the legal hours had ended, when the polls had already closed".
That extension was approved at the request of Lula's campaign, which reported difficulties in transporting voters in various regions of the country. Bolsonaro's candidacy also called for voting to be extended, but limited to five states: Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Paraná, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul.
According to the former candidate, after this "repugnant electoral fraud" there was launched "a previously orchestrated plan" by "the machinery of political persecution of the regime", which would have begun with the conviction of his father. He describes it as a "coup d'état" whose purpose would be "to silence anyone who does not agree with the state of exception established in Brazil, through a Supreme Court co-opted by the 'petista' criminal organization (the PT, the Workers' Party of Lula".
With these arguments he justifies his move to the United States, "a land of freedoms and of brothers who share the same values as the decent people of my country", where he aspires to articulate an opposition in exile, following the model of Venezuelan figures such as Juan Guaidó or María Corina Machado.
The senator has even likened himself to historical figures such as the French general Charles De Gaulle, who organized the resistance from London against Vichy France subjected to Nazism during World War II, and to the Cuban revolutionary José Martí in his struggle against the dictator Fulgencio Batista.
"I have not fled Brazil; I have left for Brazil", Bolsonaro says, who promises to address the population periodically and says that in the coming days he will make public "a strategy to mobilize the opposition" by "all peaceful and legitimate means" with the goal of "preventing Lula from consolidating a dictatorial regime in Brazil".
Thanks to Trump and Milei
Although neither the White House nor the Argentine Government have detailed their involvement in Bolsonaro's departure —the State Department has only confirmed the granting of visas with a view to possible political asylum—, the senator has expressed his gratitude to the presidents of both countries, Donald Trump and Javier Milei.
To the Argentine leader he has recognized "his courage, his sense of justice and his respect for legality", and he has extended his gratitude to the "wonderful American people" for the welcome received.
"I left Brazil, but I have not abandoned the Brazilians. This struggle did not end on October 25. It will only end when Brazil once again becomes a free country. And that day will come", he concludes in his message.