MADRID, (EUROPE PRESS). – The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Brazil voted with five votes in favor and two against to disqualify former President Jair Bolsonaro for eight years for abuse of power and fraudulent use of public resources when in July 2022 he gathered dozens in the Planalto Palace of foreign ambassadors to persuade them, without evidence, of the shortcomings of the Brazilian electoral system and electronic ballot boxes.
With the favorable vote of the vice president of the TSE, Cármen Lúcia Antunes, the political future of Bolsonaro was certified, who the day before had seen how up to two other judges supported the disqualification presented by the investigating judge in the case, Benedito Gonçalves.
“With all due respect to the eminent judge Raul Araújo, I announce to your excellency and to the judges that I am accompanying the examining magistrate in the disqualification sentence for the first person investigated, Jair Messias Bolsonaro”, said Antunes, whose vote is the fourth in favor of this sanction.
Antunes refers to Araújo, the only one of the TSE judges to date who has voted against sanctioning the former president on the grounds that despite the fact that he spread false information about the electoral system in that meeting with ambassadors, he considered that he did not comply with “the requirement of sufficient gravity”.
During the explanation of her vote, the magistrate pointed out that Bolsonaro disrespected the Executive and Judicial powers with that meeting, in which with a clear “awareness of perverting”, the former president “put the electoral process and democracy itself at risk”. .
Likewise, Antunes considers it “proven” that Bolsonaro used that meeting not only to attack facts that had already been refuted by the TSE, but also to question the legality of the candidacy of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and to promote himself electorally.
The next to offer his decision was Kassio Nunes Marques, appointed by Bolsonaro himself to fill a position on the Supreme Court, who voted against punishing the former president, stating that he has not identified “necessary seriousness” to support the accusation.
Judge Marques assured that his vote is not justified based on “political sympathies” with either of the two defendants, also referring to Walter Braga Netto, former Defense Minister and presidential running mate, who has been acquitted of the crimes. for which Bolsonaro has been convicted.
For him, that meeting with ambassadors, although it may be “questionable”, was not enough to cloud the elections that were held three months later. While he stresses that the integrity of the electronic voting system is “irrefutable,” he maintains at the same time that Bolsonaro “did not gain an advantage” over the other contenders with claims that he discredited the electoral system.
The process ended with the also favorable vote of the president of the TSE, Alexandre de Moraes, who has read the sentence remarking that “it is important to create a precedent” with which to be able to “combat the proliferation of hate and falsehoods against the electoral process”.
De Moraes has been blunt with the former president and has accused him of lying on numerous occasions and has differed with some of his colleagues that Bolsonaro’s demonstrations have nothing to do with freedom of expression. The TSE, he has said, thus responds “to populism born in the flame of hatred and anti-democratic speeches.”
“The president, by falsely affirming that there was fraud in the elections, including those he won, without presenting evidence, attacks the electoral system that has elected him for 40 years, does not fit into the exercise of freedom of expression, but rather the abuse of power”, defended the president of the TSE.
BOLSONARO REJECTS THE DECISION
How could it be otherwise, Bolsonaro, who the day before had refused to throw in the towel despite the fact that the outlook was not hopeful for his interests, assured after learning of the decision that “Brazil is in mourning.”
“From now on I will be a luxury electoral hook. Brazil is in mourning with this decision (…) this is not democracy. I will not give up my fight for Brazil, I have a twelve-year-old daughter who wants to grow up here “, has warned Bolsonaro, who has claimed to have been tried for all his work.
“They have thrown me out of the Presidency with a massacre on me and with the TSE maneuvering against my protests (…) Those who work against me boast of a victory over a dictator, I who respected the Constitution,” insisted Bolsonaro, who He has assured that with this decision they have “stabbed him in the back”.
“TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY”
For his part, from the government of Lula da Silva, the Brazilian Justice Minister, Flávio Dino, stressed that the TSE’s decision represents the triumph of democracy over its “hardest test in decades.”
“Important messages emanate from the TSE ruling”, that “the lie is not a legitimate tool to exercise a public function” and that “politics is not governed by the ‘law of the jungle’, in which the strongest all he can,” he said.
In addition to this case, by all accounts the most serious, Bolsonaro has fifteen other processes pending in the TSE. With this disqualification, he will not be able to present any political candidacy until 2030.
