Baghdad-INA
Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets of Sao Paulo in support of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who denounced the decision to declare him ineligible to run for any office.
“We cannot accept that any force can remove someone from the political scene, unless it is for a good reason. We cannot imagine elections by excluding opponents,” Bolsonaro told his supporters.
The former president announced last year that he was ineligible to run until 2030 on charges of spreading misleading information.
Bolsonaro called on his supporters to participate massively in a demonstration in support of him in São Paulo, in a test of his popularity amid a scandal surrounding suspicions of his involvement in a “coup attempt,” which he denied again.
“What is a coup? Tanks in the streets, weapons, conspiracies. None of this happened in Brazil,” Bolsonaro said in his speech.
He also described himself in his speech as a “persecuted person,” saying, “I seek to calm down, erase the past, and find a way to live in peace.”
Bolsonaro, 68, is a former army officer. He urged his supporters to “demonstrate peacefully in defense of the democratic rule of law” in the country’s economic capital, Sao Paulo, in a move whose organizers hoped would mobilize at least 500,000 people.
2024-03-01 02:34:23