The still vice president of Brazil, Hamilton Mourao, said on Tuesday that the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, «was half sad» during the ceremony he attended on Saturday at the Military Academy of Agulhas Negras, in Rio de Janeiro, the first public act in which he could be seen after his defeat in the elections of last October 30.
«I told him that there was a group of people who wanted a picture with him and I encouraged him to go and take a picture with the people,» Mourao said when asked about one of the images of Saturday’s event in which he is seen interacting with an undaunted Bolsonaro who does not respond to him.
«I was half sad,» he said in relation to that lack of response from a Bolsonaro, who is not participating directly in the transition of power as he is, after receiving this Tuesday the vice president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin at the Planalto Palace.
«He wanted to know what are the activities that the Vice-Presidency is carrying out, what is the structure, the attributions», explained Mourao, adding that it was Alckmin himself who «asked to have a coffee», reports the newspaper ‘O Globo’ The meeting, of about 40 minutes, is the first that both have held since the triumph of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the elections was known. Before, Alckmin had already had the opportunity to see Bolsonaro fleetingly in the corridors of the Planalto Palace, where they had an impromptu conversation for a few minutes.
However, it is not the first time that the two have spoken after the election results were known, since Mourao sent a message to Alckmin placing himself at his disposal during the process of transfer of power.
Mourao also indulged in a joke in dubious taste, recounting how Alckmin’s partner went to the vice president’s official residence, the Jaburu Palace, where he was received by his wife. «His wife has already gone there. It’s the woman who rules there,» he said.
