Bolsonaro breaks silence but doesn’t explicitly concede

President Jair Bolsonaro broke with political tradition by not immediately conceding his defeat to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday, after the tightest runoff election in Brazilian democratic history. After a years-long crusade to delegitimize the electoral system and threats to overthrow the election if the results didn’t go his way, he waited 43 hours before speaking to the nation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Bolsonaro delivered a two-minute speech from the presidential residence in which he failed to congratulate Lula or explicitly concede. He did not even mention the president-elect by name.

Mr. Bolsonaro began his televised speech by thanking the 58 million Brazilians who voted for him in the runoff. He then said that current “popular movements” are fueled by outrage at how the elections were conducted — in reference to the