Brazil's general election on Sunday (4) was peaceful and free of serious incidents, but it was marked by "international political activism" and by legal uncertainty created by top court decisions, according to the preliminary report of the Organization of American States (OAS) electoral observation mission, released on Tuesday (6), two days after the first round.
The document says the Brazilian race "was not exempt" from a growing trend across the Americas: heads of state publicly commenting on elections in other countries. In Brazil's case, the mission says, that activism went "to the extreme of insults being made against one of the candidacies". The report names no country and no specific case. Members of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government, however, have accused Donald Trump of the United States and Javier Milei of Argentina of trying to steer the campaign in favor of Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula's rival in the runoff, according to G1.
For Brazil, the finding has a clear limit. The OAS did not conclude that there was proven foreign interference in the election. The report notes that political actors and civil society representatives heard by the mission voiced concern about international statements and actions they believed could have affected the campaign. In the same passage, it reproduces a statement by the head of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Brazil's top electoral authority, Kassio Nunes Marques: "no facts were found that would indicate foreign interference in the Brazilian electoral process".
Criticism of the courts
The mission also criticized the judicial handling of the campaign, Folha de S.Paulo reported. According to the OAS, decisions taken individually by justices of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Brazil's top court, and of the electoral court generated legal uncertainty and, based on accounts received by observers, "may have affected equity at some moments of the race, favoring one candidacy or another". The report points mainly to rulings on disinformation rules and on the holding of debates, which it says introduced "distortions in the natural course of the campaign and conditions of legal uncertainty for the actors in the process".
On operations, the organization praised the electoral authorities and said 158.7 million voters were registered to fill 1,790 offices, in Brazil and abroad. OAS observers visited polling stations in 21 states and the Federal District, in a mission convened by the TSE, alongside teams from the European Union and Mercosur, the South American trade bloc. The report also mentions the roughly one-hour interruption in the release of results on Sunday night, which the court attributed to system congestion. According to the text, the mission's engineers who witnessed the tally concluded that the failure did not compromise the vote count.
The episode unfolds in a sensitive diplomatic environment. On the eve of the election, the United States closed its embassy and consulates in Brazil over a "security issue", according to the US State Department, and resumed services on Monday (5). Brazil's Federal Police carried out search warrants to investigate possible threats against embassies in Brasilia, but said on Sunday it had found no concrete risk. The OAS document released on Tuesday is preliminary.