As Brazil’s military rolls out the tanks for Independence Day, Bolsonaro tells fans to ‘make a stand’
But as Brazil heads toward presidential elections next month, The sympathy appears to run both ways. The Armed Forces’ leadership has echoed Bolsonaro’s election fraud claims, raising its own doubts about voting security to the Electoral Court.Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira last July said the military leadership did not necessarily doubt the electoral system, but said he believed it needed improvement. “We know very well that this electronic system always needs improvement. There is no program immune to an attack, immune to being invaded,” said Nogueira during a hearing at the Commission on Foreign Relations and National Defense.”We are not doubting, or thinking this or that. It is simply a collaborative spirit,” added the minister. Bolsonaro has said that he will accept the results of the upcoming Brazil presidential election “as long they are fair and clean,” in an interview with TV Globo´s Jornal Nacional this month. His campaign and political allies have also dismissed fans’ calls for military intervention. To Ferraz, chatter online and among extremist Bolsonaro supporters of a military intervention in the upcoming election has no basis in reality. “This can’t happen,” he says. Nevertheless, Roseno, the rally organizer, insists that he expects the worst. Falsely convinced that the deck is loaded against his candidate, he predicts that if the Armed Forces don’t intervene to ensure Bolsonaro’s reelection, “the people will” — conjuring exactly the vision of violent insurrection that experts warn the President risks inciting.CNN’s Caitlin Hu in New York contributed to this report.
