Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Luana Maria Benedito
RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rallied thousands of supporters in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday in a bid to boost his political capital after losing the re-election bid of leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in October 2022 and faced accusations of involvement in the coup.
Images posted on social media and broadcast by media outlets showed a large crowd of Bolsonaro supporters, many wearing Brazilian soccer jerseys.
The organizers of the demonstration estimated the attendance at 100 thousand people. Authorities have not released the data.
The right-wing Bolsonaro, the subject of police investigations before and during his four years in office, faces an investigation into his alleged role in a campaign to undermine faith in Brazil’s electoral system that culminated in the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising of thousands of his supporters in the capital Brasilia.
On February 8, police confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport and accused him of editing a draft decree to overturn the results of the 2022 elections, pressuring military leaders to participate in the coup and planning to jail Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes.
“Have you seen the draft decree? Me too,” Bolsonaro told reporters on Sunday. “I want to see it, people want to see it, and so does the press.”
The former president, who cannot run for office until 2030, said his government had never played “beyond the four lines of the Constitution.”
Last month, Brazil’s federal police formally accused Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic during the COVID-19 pandemic, of falsifying his vaccination records, opening the door to criminal charges.
On Sunday, Bolsonaro also took the opportunity to praise Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of electric car maker Tesla (NASDAQ:) and owner of social media platform X, whom Bolsonaro has called a champion of free speech. Bolsonaro called on the crowd to give the billionaire a “applause.”
After Musk said he would challenge Moraes’ decision ordering X to block certain accounts, lawyers representing Musk told Brazil’s Supreme Court that X would abide by any decisions made by the court or Brazil’s highest electoral court, according to a letter seen by the agency. Reuters on Monday. .
Moraes is investigating the activities of “digital militias” accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during Bolsonaro’s rule.