RIO DE JANEIRO – Washington needs to make it very clear to Jair Bosonaro (the “messianic”) Brazilian president, that any attempts to subvert the country’s electoral process would lead to multilateral sanctions. A newly retired U.S. State Department official said on Saturday.

Bolsonaro will be annoyed by Scott Hamilton’s opinion piece published in O Globo. Hamilton was U.S. Consul in Rio de Janeiro in 2018-2021. Hamilton said that Hamilton made the baseless accusations of Brazilian electoral fraud to counter any October defeat.

The article may complicate the relationship between Brasilia and Washington at a time when U.S. officials have pushed to improve ties https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-looks-closer-ties-brazil-time-turmoil-war-2022-04-26 with Bolsonaro’s administration, trying to overcome differences over the Ukraine war.

Bolsonaro’s office and U.S. Embassy in Brasilia didn’t immediately reply to inquiries for comment.

Hamilton said that during his stay in Rio, he “witnessed how Bolsonaro was trying to subvert the integrity and the democratic process in Brazil.”

Hamilton wrote that the Brazilian president had “clear and dangerous intentions: to undermine public faith in the electoral system and to set the scene for an effort to reject its outcomes.”

Bolsonaro is trailing leftist former President LuizInacio Lulada Silva in opinion surveys ahead of Oct. 2. election.

Hamilton stated that Bolsonaro was “a envoy for God” to free Brazil from communism. It’s a mesianic vision that is not subject to rational thought.”

Hamilton wrote that, in response, the United States should tell President Bolsonaro “The United States should make it clear to him that any attempt to corrupt the integrity the Brazilian election process will be subject to… punitive Sanctions on all of them, simultaneously imposed by a large group of countries.”