Ex-Brazilian president admits in court that after Lula’s win, ‘we studied other alternatives within the constitution’
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has denied masterminding a far-right coup plot at his trial in the supreme court, but he admitted to taking part in meetings to discuss “alternative ways” of staying in power after his defeat in the 2022 election.
In just over two hours of questioning, the 70-year-old said that after the electoral court confirmed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s election victory, “we studied other alternatives within the constitution.”
Those options included the deployment of military forces and suspension of some civil liberties, Bolsonaro said, but he argued that such discussions could not be considered an attempted coup.
“A coup is something abominable. A coup may even be easy to start. The day after is simply unpredictable and harmful to everyone. Brazil could not go through something like that, and such a hypothesis was never even considered during my government,” he said.
