Musk: Twitter Possibly Gave Preference to Left-Wing Candidates in Brazil Election

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - US billionaire entrepreneur and the newly minted owner of Twitter Elon Musk said on Saturday that Twitter personnel could have given preference to leftist candidates during the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, without substantiating his claim.

"I've seen a lot of concerning tweets about the recent Brazil election. If those tweets are accurate, it's possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates," Musk tweeted in response to his follower's tweet about elections "handled by the former Twitter regime."

Brazil held the first round of the election on October 2, with the main competition unfolding between outgoing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro represents the right-wing camp of Brazil's politics and has repeatedly made controversial statements on minorities, women, political opponents, and other groups. Lula, who had served as president from 2003-2010, was jailed in 2018 after being charged with corruption and money laundering in a major scandal targeting Petrobras, the country's state oil producer. He was freed in 2019 and had his political rights were reinstated in 2021 after the Supreme Federal Court ruled that he was tried by a court with no proper jurisdiction.

Since none of them crossed the 50% threshold in the first round of the election, they confronted each other in the runoff on October 30. According to official results from Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, Lula got 50.9% of the vote, securing victory over the sitting president, who won 49.1% of the vote.