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Montevideo, August 26th 2022 - 19:20 UTC

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro affirmed Monday that he will respect the result of the October elections if the polls are held in a “clean and transparent” manner.

“Whatever the result, with clean and transparent elections, the results have to be respected.”

The Brazilian president's statements came on Monday night, during the first installment of a series of interviews that the O Globo signal conducts with the presidential candidates for the upcoming national elections.

On all the occasions in which he answered the question about the recount of votes in the interview, Bolsonaro conditioned the recognition of the result to the elections being clean.

However, during the live broadcast, interviewers and viewers noticed that Bolsonaro had notes in ink on the palm of his left hand.

A photo enlarged and published by the profile Eixo Político, on Twitter, shows the words registered on the palm of the president's hand: “NICARAGUA”, “ARGENTINA”, “COLOMBIA” and “DÁRIO MESSER”.

This would be a sort of “headline” or aide-memoire for the president, who undoubtedly wanted to make sure to address certain issues during the report.

Since last year, Bolsonaro has been criticizing and discrediting the current electronic voting system, implemented in 1996 and which has never had proven fraud.

So far, the far-right leader has resisted promising to recognize the election result if he loses the election, as all polls indicate.

In the interview, Bolsonaro also expressed his confidence that the president of the Superior Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, “will fulfill the objective” of conducting clean elections.

“We will have elections,” asserted the leader of the Brazilian far-right, when asked about a possible boycott of the electoral lawsuit by his most radical followers.

However, he affirmed that there was a need for “provocation” to achieve this commitment to “electoral transparency”, according to EFE news agency.

Jair Bolsonaro (PL) está com uma “cola” na sua mão para a entrevista do Jornal Nacional: NICARÁGUA ARGENTINA COLÔMBIA DÁRIO MESSER (um doleiro) pic.twitter.com/CR98y4Js5h

The three countries mentioned on Bolsonaro's cheat sheet written on his hand are currently administered by leftist governments, and Bolsonaro does not have the best relationship with them.

As for Dário Messer, he is a money changer sentenced to 13 years in prison for money laundering, as part of Operation Lava Jato.

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