US President Donald Trump has questioned Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s surprise election victory, claiming the vote “looked like another rigged election” without providing any evidence.
Trump made the remarks on Monday, even as the party of defeated right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro later acknowledged the result of Sunday’s presidential runoff.
Flavio, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, had refused to concede defeat and said he would seek to annul Lula’s victory after the Supreme Court extended voting by two hours.
Bolsonaro’s party acknowledges election result
Later on Monday, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party acknowledged the runoff result in a statement signed by party head Valdemar Costa Neto.
“We recognize the presidential election results,” Costa Neto said. “But we believe the issues raised need to be properly clarified.”
Flavio, who has not commented publicly since the party’s statement, said earlier on Monday that he would comply with a federal police order to surrender his passports following a visit to his father, who is under house arrest. He also denied planning to flee Brazil.
Trump did not endorse Bolsonaro before the election, although Reuters reported that officials from his State Department had led a campaign to return the Bolsonaro family to power.
“I didn’t take sides, but it looked like another rigged election,” Trump told reporters. “It looked very bad to me.”
Lula defeated Bolsonaro by more than four million votes, making the result difficult to overturn.
According to an analysis of electoral records by Insper professor Pedro Burgos, fewer than 35,000 votes, or about 0.03% of the total, were cast during the additional two hours of voting ordered by the Supreme Court.
“I just think it had a very bad look, the election, the way it was tabulated,” Trump said. “The extension given was very strange.”
Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin defended Brazil’s electoral system in a television interview with Rede Vanguarda, describing Trump’s remarks as “totally wrong” and “unfounded”.
Neither Trump nor Jair Bolsonaro accepted their respective election defeats in 2020 and 2022. Brazil’s former president was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after losing to Lula.
Analysts do not expect Flavio to be able to build the same anti-democratic movement as his father did in 2022.
Markets shaken by Lula’s victory
World leaders have widely congratulated Lula on securing an unprecedented fourth mandate, but investors reacted negatively to the result after many had bet on a Bolsonaro victory.
Brazil’s real fell 8.1% against the US dollar, marking its biggest one-day decline since 2002. The country’s stock exchange also recorded its steepest one-day fall since 2020.
“The initial selloff could moderate as election-related positions are unwound, but investors will demand convincing fiscal commitments before rebuilding exposure,” said Andres Abadia, chief Latin America economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Lula’s victory defied opinion polls, precedent and a global trend of anti-incumbent sentiment, halting a wave of right-wing election victories across Latin America.
Although Lula trailed Bolsonaro in the first round, he managed to persuade voters to support him in the runoff.
Pollsters attributed his victory partly to higher-than-expected turnout and an improved social media campaign.
During the campaign, Lula highlighted his record on reducing poverty and inequality, as well as record-low unemployment, illiteracy and deforestation.
However, his fourth term is expected to be challenging. He will face an uphill battle to advance his agenda in a Congress increasingly dominated by Bolsonaro allies, following a surge in conservative support during the first round of the general election.
