The far-right ex-president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was disqualified yesterday for eight years, so he will not be able to run in the next presidential elections in 2026. The sentence was adopted by the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in the last session of the trial that took place this week in Brasília. The decision was made by the vote of five judges in favor and two against.
However, before the plenary session of the TSE began, Bolsonaro announced that he would file an appeal before the Supreme Court, with which the sentence would not be final until the country’s highest court issues its verdict. It should be noted, however, that three Supreme Court judges are also part of the TSE, Cármen, Alexandre de Moraes and Kassio Nunes Marques; the first two voted for the disqualification, and the third, against.
A majority of the seven magistrates of the TSE consider that during the 2022 campaign the former president discredited the electoral system, abused his power by sowing doubts about the reliability of the electronic vote – which until then no political party had questioned -, and spread false information and conspiracy theories to destabilize the democratic system.
The main proof of abuse of power against Bolsonaro analyzed by the TSE was a meeting that the then president held at the official residence in July 2022 – a few months before the elections – with foreign ambassadors accredited to Brazil, in which the ultra leader questioned the credibility of the election results and criticized the electronic voting system. “The meeting at the Palau de l’Alvorada was an abuse of political power”, concluded yesterday Alexandre de Moraes, president of the TSE, who was the last to announce his vote, also in favor of disqualification.
Beyond the announced appeal before the Supreme Court, Bolsonaro assured on Thursday that he trusted that, in the event of his disqualification, Congress would grant him amnesty, taking into account the weight of his supporters in the legislature.
“Amnesty is provided for in the democratic regime and it is the Parliament that decides it”, said the former president, in relation to the bill that the Bolsonaro deputies announced they would present to restore the political rights of the ex-captain of the ‘army in case it was disabled until 2030, as predicted.
This is the first conviction against Bolsonaro since he left power on January 1, although he did not attend the inauguration of his successor, the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is also the first of the 16 processes he has open for different acts committed during his mandate (2019-2022). The ultra leader is also being investigated for not preventing the spread of covid or for appropriating jewels and other goods given to him by Saudi Arabia when he was president.
It is also under judicial suspicion if Bolsonaro promoted the assault on the Plaza dels Tresde in Brasilia, when hundreds of people who had been camping in the Brazilian capital for weeks and calling for military intervention against Lula’s victory razed the headquarters of the executive powers, legislative and judicial.
The president of the ruling Workers’ Party, Gleisi Hoffmann, celebrated the disqualification because it is “didactic” and “condemns the methods of the far right”.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro reacted to the sentence in a melodramatic tone and alluded to the attack he suffered in 2018, when he was stabbed by a man during a campaign event. “Recently I was stabbed in the stomach and now I have been stabbed in the back with political disqualification for abuse of political power,” the far-right leader told reporters.
