Bolsonaro, one vote away from losing his political rights for eight years

Three of the seven judges agreed to sentence the far-right for “abuse of power and improper use of the media” in the elections. The trial was suspended until Friday.

The far-right ex-president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, stayed this Thursday one step away from losing his political rights for eight years.

Three of the seven judges of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) considered that the 68-year-old former president incurred in “abuse of power and misuse of media” for exposing to 40 ambassadors his unfounded theory against the reliability of electronic ballot boxes three months before the elections.

For this reason, they supported disqualifying him until 2030, when he is 75 years old. Another judge voted against. The trial, in Brasilia, was suspended and will resume on Friday at 12:00 local time, pending the decision of the other three judges.

If the trend is confirmed, the ultra-rightist will miss the municipal elections in 2024 and the state and national elections in 2026.

He acted “abnormally”

The trial began last week, and was resumed on Tuesday with the vote of the reporting judge Benedito Goncalves, who considered that the meeting between Bolsonaro and the diplomatic corps “had an electoral purpose” to influence “the electorate and national public opinion and international” using his position.

This Thursday, one of the judges who voted in favor of the disqualification, Floriano Marques, said that Bolsonaro “mobilized all the power of the president to emulate his electoral strategy for his own benefit, acting in an abnormal, immoral and extremely serious manner.”

Judge Raul Araujo, for his part, voted against arguing that a democracy “there should be no limits to the right to doubt”, in relation to Bolsonaro’s criticism of the polls. The magistrate accepted that the ex-president disclosed false information in that meeting, but considered that this not a “serious enough fact” as to be condemned.

The meeting with the ambassadors was broadcast on the official government television channel. The electoral law considers that the abuse of political power occurs when the accused takes advantage of his position and uses public goods in order to influence the voter.

“It is an injustice”

Bolsonaro’s defense already announced days ago that he will appeal the disqualification in the TSE itself and in the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

The ex-president said days ago his disqualification would be “an affront” and this Thursday he told the press that this decision would be “an injustice.”

“My God, point something concrete I did against democracyI played inside the four lines [de la Constitucion] all the time,” he said.

“We cannot stop discussing any issue. Everything can be perfected, but it seems that talking about a vaccine, voting or a ‘censorship project’ has become a crime in Brazil,” he added.

The process began at the request of the center-left Democratic Labor Party (PDT, for its acronym in Portuguese), which filed a lawsuit for Bolsonaro’s actions in the meeting before the ambassadors, in which he again attacked the electronic system that Brazil he has used since 1996 and with which he himself was elected several timesas president in 2018 and several times as a deputy.

That theory, which Bolsonaro repeated multiple times over the years, would have prompted his radical supporters to clamor election fraud and that, a few days after the inauguration of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, they invaded and destroyed the headquarters of the three powers in Brasilia.

For these facts, the former president is also being prosecuted in the highest court.

In addition, he has another 15 cases open in the TSE for irregularities during the last elections, which he lost, and at least four in the STF, one of them to associate, also without evidence, the coronavirus vaccine at the risk of contracting AIDS.