The international community must signal that it will not tolerate “the premature death of Brazilian democracy”, one of Jair Bolsonaro’s main rivals has said after Brazil’s far-right president intensified his attacks on the South American country’s electoral system.
Speaking to the Guardian, the centre-left politician Ciro Gomes – who plans to challenge Bolsonaro in next year’s presidential election – called the incumbent “a moral and human excrescence” whose anti-democratic rhetoric risked causing sparking violence in the lead-up to the vote.
Bolsonaro, who is being treated in hospital for a bowel obstruction, has repeatedly assailed Brazil’s electronic voting system in recent weeks in what some see as a bid to distract from a coronavirus corruption scandal that has pummeled his ratings and fuelled calls for his impeachment and street protests.
At one point the rightwing populist, who others fear could try to cling to power if he loses the 2022 election, hinted…