- Mariana Sanches @mariana_sanches
- From BBC News Brazil in Washington
2 October 2022, 21:26 03
Updated 2 hours ago
Credit, EPA
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Despite the tense atmosphere in the country, the technical process of the election was satisfactory, according to foreign experts.
Despite the tense atmosphere that characterized the 2022 presidential election, shortly after polling stations closed, international observers who monitored the voting this Sunday (02/10) and provided technical support for the elections in recent weeks said that the electoral process had taken place as planned “Normality”, “calmness” and “transparency”.
BBC News Brasil spoke to representatives of four international bodies that have sent election observation missions to Brazil. According to experts, despite some “hiccups” such as delays and long voting lines and occasional acts of violence, Brazil has set “a democratic example for the world”.
“The long queues, which indicate a very high turnout, are also a sign of how much Brazilians trust their electoral process and want to participate.” In terms of integrity and trust, our team found nothing, everything was tested intensively. very positively,” Maximo Zaldivar, director for Latin America at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), told BBC News Brasil.
In addition to IFES, members of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Institute for Democracy and Electoral System (IDEA), the Carter Center and the Unión Interamericana de Organismos Electorales (Uniore) are represented in Brazil.
“Brazil has so far adhered very well to two of the most important rules of democracy: clarity and firmness in the rules and application of those rules at the time of voting. Electronic voting machines have once again proven themselves to be reliable and safe, but the biggest tension is acceptance of the results by winners and losers,” said IDEA’s Daniel Zovatto.
Zovatto, who spent the day touring electoral colleges in the federal capital, noted that there was an atmosphere of calm in the queues, with no animosity between those wearing Brazilian soccer team jerseys and red shirts.
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military in Fortaleza (CE) in the first round; Teams must continue to monitor the country and expect violence into the second round
But like Zovatto, other observers believe that the great stress test for Brazilian democracy will come with the announcement of the winner. And with polls this Sunday pointing to a second round, according to foreign observers, that should postpone that concern to the next 30th, when the Brazilians will define the next president between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Jair Bolsonaro. PL).
In the almost onemonth period between the first and second rounds, the teams must continue to monitor the country and continue to expect acts of violence, especially as the country has proven to be even more divided in the analysis of these experts appeared to be before the 1st round.
“It is remarkable that the two most voted voters are not too far apart and the third and fourth places appear far behind, so we are talking about a country divided in two,” says one of the observers.
TSE strengthened
Credit, Portal
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Voters in São Paulo faced long lines to vote
According to foreign observers, the atmosphere in the TSE was fairly calm during the count, with officials chatting while the supercomputers calculated the votes. The corpse was under constant and powerful artillery from Bolsonaro throughout the election process.
For one observer polled by BBC News Brasil, the fact that Bolsonaro performed so well in the election in contrast to much of the polling, which never took him above the 40% level of voting intentions institutionally strengthens the TSE. “This refutes Bolsonaro’s argument that there is a fraud engine in the electoral court. The winner is the TSE,” he said.
Some of the international experts were invited to work in Brazil this year precisely because of what they described as a systemic attack on the Supreme Electoral Court something unprecedented on this scale in Brazil but with precedents in other Latin American countries , such as Mexico and Peru. .
Observers noted that his action would be primarily a political endorsement of the country’s institutional process, and even expressed concern about the behavior of the Brazilian president, who accused Bolsonaro of the TSE of being “biased” just a week before the election , and called its president. Minister Alexandre de Moraes, from “Child”.
“The whole process this Sunday shows the deliverance of the body,” the director of one of those bodies said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized by the body to manifest.
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