Brazil's Bolsonaro breaks silence on election loss: "It hurts my soul"
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Bolsonaro not only went dark on media platforms, which he was known to be very active on, but he also began skipping official duties like the G20 summit.
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Former Brazilian presidet Jair Bolsonaro (Poder360)
After a long-awaited silence following his defeat in the presidential elections, Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro broke his silence on Friday, expressing that it "hurts my soul."
Rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took the win in the runoff elections on October 30, and after Bolsonaro mysteriously disappeared for weeks, he said: "I've been silent for practically 40 days. It hurts, it hurts my soul. I have always been a happy person among you, even risking my life among the people,"
In response to his defeat, his supporters not only blocked main roads but set up protests in front of military barracks in an attempt to influence the military into preventing Lula from taking office on January 1, which is when Bolsonaro will step down.
According to reports, Bolsonaro is planning on traveling on inauguration day to avoid passing the sash to his leftist successor. He not only went dark on media platforms, which he was known to be very active on, but he also began skipping official duties like the G20 summit that took place in Bali in November, while leaving his VP to carry out routine tasks like accepting new ambassadors' credentials.
Brazil's top electoral authority head, Alexandre de Moraes, fined Bolsonaro's party more than $4 million for bringing a case "in bad faith" which involved Bolsonaro's Liberal Party (PL) filing a complaint to challenge the election's outcome, claiming that some of the electronic voting machines were flawed and that those votes should be invalidated, an argument that election officials dismissed.
Following the win, Lula began forming the government by appointing former Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad as the country's finance minister.
"(I chose) comrade Fernando Haddad as Minister of Finance," Lula told a press conference in the capital, Brasilia on December 9. Lula's other picks included Mauro Vieira as foreign minister, Flavio Dino as justice minister, Jose Mucio Monteiro as defense minister, and Rui Costa, Bahia governor, as chief of staff.
Haddad was the country's education minister from 2005 to 2012, and he comes in place of liberal economy minister Paul Guedes, a staunch ally of the far-right Bolsonaro.
