Left-leaning Lula won Sunday’s presidential election in a close race against far-right Bolsonaro. Lula got 50.9 percent of the vote in the runoff, Bolsonaro 49.1 percent.
The incumbent’s silence for two days after his defeat had fueled fears that he would not accept the outcome of the election. Across the country, Bolsonaro supporters protested Lula’s victory and set up roadblocks.
In his short speech on Tuesday, Bolsonaro called on the demonstrators to refrain from violence. “Peaceful protests will always be welcome,” but freedom of movement should not be restricted, he said. The demonstrations are the result of “outrage and a sense of injustice” at the electoral process, the president added.
The authorities meanwhile stepped up action against the roadblocks. Deputy Chief of the Federal Traffic Police (PRF), Marco Antonio Territo de Barros, said at a press conference in the capital Brasília on Tuesday that there are still 267 roadblocks in the country. According to this, more than 200 such blockades have been resolved since Sunday.
Bolsonaro supporters are setting up roadblocks in at least 23 of Brazil’s 27 states to protest Lula’s victory in Sunday’s runoff election, according to the PRF. Barros spoke of a “complex operation” involving a network of more than 75,000 kilometers of federal roads. The PRF had requested the support of the federal police and other police units, it said.
A Supreme Court judge ordered the “immediate end of the blockade of public highways and roads” on Monday evening and asked the federal traffic police to take all necessary steps.
In the city of Novo Hamburgo, near the southern city of Porto Alegre, police used tear gas to disperse protests, a reporter from the AFP news agency reported.
“No to Lula!” Demonstrators chanted at a bridge in São Paulo. Several roads were blocked there, including a large connecting road that leads to Rio de Janeiro.
On Monday evening, the blockade of roads around Guarulhos Airport in Sao Paulo, the country’s largest international airport, caused several flights to be canceled. On Tuesday afternoon, the police had cleared the access road again.
A particularly high number of roadblocks were reported from the southern state of Santa Catarina, where almost 70 percent of voters had voted for Bolsonaro.
In the capital, Brasília, police restricted access to Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Square). The square is home to the President’s seat, the Parliament and Brazil’s Supreme Court. The restrictions are a precautionary measure in the face of calls for protests on the Internet, it said.
Bolsonaro supporters campaigned for support for the protests on the online services Twitter and Telegram. In São Paulo, for example, the “biggest mobilization in history” was called for Wednesday on the central Avenida Paulista.
Lula meanwhile entrusted his vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin with the two-month handover process leading up to his assumption of office on January 1st. The process should begin on Thursday, said the party leader of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT), Gleisi Hoffmann.
