BRAZIL’S left has condemned Jair Bolsonaro’s government for rushing a Bill through parliament to privatise the state electricity company Eletrobras.

The lower house passed the legislation on Thursday morning but it must go to the Senate before becoming law. The Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) said it could challenge the way that the Bill was fast-tracked through parliament in the courts.

The party’s national president Luciana Santos, who is also deputy governor of Pernambuco state, said President Bolsonaro was selling off “a strategic asset, a patrimony of the Brazilian people.”

Delivering it to private interests would make “energy costs more expensive for ordinary people, hand over the management of our rivers and change the priority of this service, which should always be the social interest,” she charged.

The Socialist Party’s Alessandro Molon asked: “Is it reasonable to sell the sixth most lucrative company in Brazil, decisive for energy sovereignty? Is it reasonable to vote on an important matter like this in 23 hours?”

On Wednesday night former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that the decision undermined Brazil’s energy security and accused Mr Bolsonaro of planning to sell the company “for the price of a banana.”

It was “just another crime against the Brazilian people and the future of our country,” he said.

Lula, as he is known, will stand against Mr Bolsonaro for the presidency next year as the Workers Party candidate and is expected to be backed across the left.

His convictions on trumped-up corruption charges, which have now been annulled, prevented him from running against the far-right leader in 2018, though polls indicated that he would have won.