Brazil military finds no fraud in election, but refuses to rule it out
A military aircraft lands at the presidential run-off rally in Curitiba, Brazil, on April 8, 2015.
Credit:
JOAQUIM ROCHA/AP
BRASILIA – A day after its supreme court declared Brazil’s disputed presidential election rigged, the country’s electoral body announced that it had discovered no fraud whatsoever.
The country’s electoral commission said it had made “a thorough examination” into the electoral procedures and found that irregularities were “not found,” and that a candidate’s victory in the runoff ballot was “entirely predictable.”
In a statement, the electoral commission said on Twitter that it will announce its final results in a press conference “shortly.”
The military intervention in the election, which followed a dispute over the results and the possibility of Brazil’s first female president, Marcella Bolsonaro, being elected, has been decried internationally as a blatant violation of Brazilian democracy.
The federal prosecutor’s office has opened a formal investigation into possible fraud in the vote, and the country’s supreme court will be asked to determine whether there was fraud in the process.
Brazil’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Monday calling the election “a democratic, transparent political process” that “had no irregularities.”
On Monday morning, however, a spokesman for the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSDB) said the electoral court found no fraud, in part because the candidate who won the runoff contest was overwhelmingly expected to win.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s initial decision came as Bolsonaro called for the electoral commission to be shut down and its head transferred.
Brazil’s electoral commission said that it had looked at some of the irregularities that Bolsonaro alleged in a television interview, but said that those were far too minor to justify a reversal of the results.
The head of the commission said Brazil’s elections are “irreversible” and vowed that the electoral court would make a final decision.
“The elections are irreversible,” said Jo