Bolsonaro's vice president says that there is no electoral fraud, but that Lula should not have participated

MADRID, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The still vice president of Jair Bolsonaro, Hamilton Mourao, has assured this Wednesday that although he does not share with those who affirm that there was fraud in the last elections in Brazil, he also considers that "one of the players", in clear allusion to the elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva should not have participated.

"We agreed to participate in a game with another player who should not have played. If we agreed there is nothing to complain about. From there it makes no sense to cry anymore, we lost the game," Mourao settled in a interview for the newspaper 'O Globo'.

At another point in that conversation, Mourao, who was elected senator in the first round, insisted that although from his point of view there was no fraud, as those who since Sunday have been blocking some of the main highways of the country, there was "a player who should not have played".

In that sense, he stressed that the protests should have occurred when "the player who should not have played" was authorized. "There they should have taken to the streets, but they didn't. There are 58 million protesters, but they agreed to play the game, so they have to calm down," he said.

The allies and voters of Bolsonaro who have come out to protest the results of the elections and even call for a military intervention maintain that Lula da Silva should not have participated in the elections due to convictions for corruption that were later found to be fraudulent.

The Supreme Court of Brazil decided to release him and annul his sentences in March 2021, thus recovering his political rights, after it considered that the court that tried him lacked jurisdiction and subsequently evidenced that there was bias during a process in which the Judge Sergio Moro --later Bolsonaro's Minister of Justice-- acted as a sort of prosecutor.

Mourao has taken stock of these three years as vice president of Brazil, a position, he said, that has caused him some "frustration" due to the few powers he has, unlike other presidential regimes.

"What I have learned is that you have to know what the role of the vice president is. The Constitution says that the Executive is exercised by the president and his ministers, the vice president is just an appendage," lamented Mourao, who during these years has starred in various dialectical disputes with Bolsonaro.

However, he has denied that he has publicly argued with him and has attributed it to their different visions of how to do things, since the ideology and thought is the same. "I never stressed with him, nor did he make me sleepy. I drink whiskey every day before bed, so I don't lose sleep," she has confessed.

"He is a more incisive subject, with more verbiage, I am not. My way of doing things is different. He was always a deputy, in the Chamber if you do not stand out in the fight, they swallow you and Bolsonaro's role was to stick his finger in the others and he continues to play that role and I have already passed that phase of life," he argued.

Regarding the time it has taken Bolsonaro to come forward after his defeat, Mourao has defended that "everyone acts in their own way" and that if it took almost two days it is because he was looking for "the best way" to act "without incurring in offenses or illegalities".