Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been confined to his official residence in Brasilia since his loss to Lula due to a skin infection in his leg, the vice-president revealed to the daily O Globo on Wednesday.
“It’s a health issue. He has a leg injury, erysipelas. He can’t put on pants. How could he come here in bermudas?” said Vice-President Hamilton Mourao to a reporter for this newspaper, on the sidelines of a ceremony at the presidential palace in Planalto.
The presidency did not respond to a request for information from AFP about the health of the head of state.
Erysipelas is a skin infection caused by bacteria, which in most cases affects the lower limbs.
Absent at COP27
Since his defeat by a short header against the icon of the left Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the second round of the presidential election on October 30, Jair Bolsonaro, 67, has appeared only once in public, two days later, for a speech at the Planalto. After being walled for nearly 48 hours in silence, the far-right outgoing president did not explicitly acknowledge his defeat and did not congratulate the winner of the ballot.
It has been two weeks since he left his residence in Alvorada, about 5 km from Planalto, where the offices of the presidency are located. Its absence was noticed at COP27 in Egypt and at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Since his defeat, Bolsonarist militants dressed in yellow and green, the colors of the Brazilian flag, have been demonstrating in front of military barracks, demanding an intervention by the army to prevent Lula from coming to power for a third term, after having governed the country. Brazil from 2003 to 2010.
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