The Liberal Party (PL), which supported the frustrated candidacy for re-election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, asked this Tuesday to invalidate the result of the elections won by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The PL filed a lawsuit before the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) in which it asks to “invalidate” the results of the electronic ballot boxes of older models, which are more than half, because it considers them impossible to audit.
An audit commissioned by the community pointed out that Bolsonaro was the most voted in the newest model ballot boxes, manufactured as of 2020, with 51.05% of the votes.
Specifically, the demand is focused on 61% of the 577,125 ballot boxes used in the October elections, about which the PL said that they were manufactured between 2009 and 2015 and “cannot be audited”, unlike the rest, more modern , 2020 model.
In a press conference called by the PL, the engineer Carlos Rocha, responsible for the audit, explained that the intention of this work is to “contribute to the strengthening of democracy” and with an “improvement of the electoral system.”
In addition, he maintained that the report identified “very strong indications of malfunction” of many of the ballot boxes and that the intention now is for a “possible inspection, an extraordinary verification, to be carried out in the face of an extraordinary event.”
The lawyer Marcelo Bessa, representative of the PL, added that “because of this technical report, the inconsistencies and the relevant data” that it presents, that formation has asked the electoral authorities to “verify this possible malfunction.”
According to Bessa, “if it were verified, the necessary legal measures should be applied”, on which he declined to comment.
According to the official result, Lula prevailed in the second round of the elections on October 30 with 50.9% of the votes, compared to the 49.1% obtained by Bolsonaro.
The ballot boxes were inspected and endorsed by numerous official bodies, including the Armed Forces, which found no evidence of fraud in their report on the elections, but neither did they rule out the possibility that it could have occurred.
Bolsonaro, to this day, has not yet publicly acknowledged his defeat or congratulated his rival, but he has allowed the transition to begin with the team designated by Lula for that purpose.
Since the day after the elections, Bolsonaro supporters have been camped out at the gates of dozens of barracks in various cities across the country, demanding a coup that prevents Lula’s inauguration, but until now the military has completely ignored this movement.
A video about one of these protests, held in front of a Porto Alegre barracks, generated all kinds of comments on social networks, as protesters can be seen flashing lights into the sky with their phones, at night, and asking for “help ”.
What many came to interpret as a request for “extraterrestrial help” was explained by one of the participants with the excuse that in reality the lights were aimed at an officer’s office, on one of the upper floors of the barracks.
Information of: chvnoticias.cl
Photo credits: EFE
