Bolsonaro says he misses what happened in the election audit in Brazil

President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday raised doubts about the scrutiny of Sunday’s election in Brazil, coming second to progressive leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, remembering that he led them most of the time before they favored his rival.

The far-right leader, in a live broadcast on social networks, expressed his surprise at the change in the trends of the winner during the voting, and hinted that it appeared to be the result of a programmed algorithm.

“It seems that if we had had five more minutes of counting, our opponent would have secured the elections in the first round (by obtaining more than half the votes),” the head of state said.

Bolsonaro led the vote for most of the time and was four percentage points ahead, Lula only appeared in first place with 70% of the vote counted and ended up winning by five points.

The progressive leader, with 48.4% of the valid votes, will have to face the far-right leader, who has 43.2%, in a ballot scheduled for October 30 to determine Brazil’s presidency.

Bolsonaro cited the 2014 election, in which Lula’s political daughter, Dilma Rousseff, narrowly defeated centrist Esseo Neves, and after she also began to lose, and recalled suspicions of fraud that arose at the time.

“Even the graph of evolution (counting) taking into account the percentage of votes counted showed a uniform geometric figure, very typical for algorithms and very similar to what it was in 2014, when Aecio Neves was defeated,” he said.

However, the president did not go so far as to question the transparency of the Brazilian electoral system – as he did before the elections – nor to ignore the outcome of the vote, which he feared would happen if he lost.

“We went through audits and some problems came up, but we put those problems behind our backs,” he said.

The head of state also criticized the polling companies, which even predicted Lula’s election in the first round, and accused them of trying to manipulate voters.

Recent polls before the election had predicted Lula would get more than half the vote and lead by 14 points over Bolsonaro, and none of them realized the power of the head of state.

“It was a scandal at the polls that really affected the election results. All the polls were wrong and this drives the voter to vote in the elections you lead. They were all wrong against me and it was clear that they were. In bad faith to serve the interests of those who funded the ballot.”