EASTORA REPORT | Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has lost presidential elections before. His point on Tuesday was that he stayed in Brazil to fight another day.
Flávio Bolsonaro, he said, did not.
“I lost twice to Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and I stayed here,” Lula said in BrasÃlia after learning that the defeated presidential candidate had left Brazil for the United States.
Bolsonaro’s departure came after he missed a Supreme Court deadline to surrender his ordinary and diplomatic passports as part of a money-laundering investigation that he denies. Federal Police canceled the documents and said there was no record of him leaving through a regular Brazilian migration checkpoint.
The timing gave Lula an opening to turn Bolsonaro’s exit into a political attack.
“When they asked me to surrender my passport, I surrendered my passport,” he said, arguing that his rival should have remained in Brazil and tried to clear his name.
Lula then widened the attack to the Bolsonaro family’s relationship with Washington.
“For the Bolsonaro family, Brazil is their second homeland,” he said. “Their first homeland is licking boots in the United States.”
Bolsonaro lost Sunday’s runoff with 48.21% of the vote to Lula’s 51.79%. He initially challenged the result and sought to have the election annulled, although his Liberal Party later acknowledged Lula’s victory.
A senior U.S. State Department official has since said Bolsonaro and members of his family will be granted visas to enter the United States. Brazilian authorities are still trying to establish exactly how he left the country.
For Lula, the contrast is now part of the story of his victory: he says he lost elections and stayed.
Bolsonaro lost — and left.