Bolsonaro on Brazil Polls: I Will Only Accept My Victory

Brazilian alt-right Social Liberal Party (PSL) presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, who has expressed admiration for the country's military dictatorship between 1964-1985 declared that he "will not accept an election result that is not my own victory."

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“I cannot speak for the Armed Forces commanders, but from the support I see in the streets, I will not accept an election result that is not my own victory,” Bolsonaro said Friday in an interview with Band TV, from a hospital room where he is recovering from a stabbing three weeks ago.

When asked by the interviewer, the former army captain claimed that the argument wasn't anti-democratic, because "it is an electoral system that does not exist anywhere else in the world."

Bolsonaro has previously accused the leftist Workers Party (PT) of plotting a corruption scheme to win the elections, now prompting fears that the new remark is a warning that he may incite a military coup if he does not win. During Friday's interview, Bolsonaro, yet again, said that "only with fraud, there is no other way (that the PT wins), only with fraud."

"We (the armed forces) are the guarantee of the constitution, there is no democracy without armed forces," the former army captain, Bolsonaro, said during the interview. He later elaborated that, if he is president, he "would put the armed forces in the streets if there is a legal rearguard, and I'll put pressure to Congress for it. Or somebody from the other side (PT) has to tell us how to resolve the problem without shooting."

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Regarding a military coup, Bolsonaro said "the armed forces wouldn't take the initiative, if the first mistake came from the PT, then it could happen, yes, a participation of the armed forces. But with the PT making the first mistake." 

Fernando Haddad, the presidential candidate for the PT, who replaced former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is in second place in the polls with 21 percent, trailing leading candidate Bolsonaro's 27 percent.

Bolsonaro, who has been criticized nationally and internationally for sexist, homophobic, racist and authoritarian comments, will contest the election with vice-presidential running-mate, military General Hamilton Mourao.