2023-06-30 05:01:00
The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of Brazil suspended until Friday at noon the judicial process in which the political disqualification of former President Jair Bolsonaro is discussed for the next eight years, with the favorable vote of three judges and only one against. this measure.
During the third session of the trial held on Thursday, the magistrates who supported the conviction of the right-wing leader were Floriano de Azevedo Marques and André Ramos Tavares. The investigating judge of the process, Benedito Gonçalves, also voted in favor of Bolsonaro’s disqualification on Tuesday, because he considered it proven that Bolsonaro used his then position as head of state “to degrade the electoral environment”, “incite a state of collective paranoia ” and fabricate “conspiracy theories” with “false information” and “egregious lies”.
Marqués, although he also criticized the inclusion of the coup “draft” in the process, described this fact as a mere accessory to the accusation related to that meeting, which was not part of his institutional agenda and its electoral nature was evident. “The president could legitimately abstain, preserve his beliefs, his disbelief, but it was not up to him to institutionally generate suspicions about the reliability of the electoral system, through which he had been elected several times, nor on national television, much less before representatives of foreign nations,” he explained.
Tavares, for his part, recalled that the right to freedom of expression does not protect the “propagation of lies” and defined that meeting as a “true strategy” for electoral purposes, in which unequivocal attacks were launched against parties, candidates and even TSE and Supreme Court judges.
The vote against
Judge Raul Araújo began the third session of this process by voting against his disqualification. Although he acknowledged that Bolsonaro spread false information about the electoral system in that meeting with ambassadors, he considered that it did not meet “the requirement of sufficient seriousness.”
He also defended that sufficient measures were taken so that this meeting did not have electoral repercussions, citing the withdrawal of the recording from the Internet, in addition to dismissing the impact it could have had, because they were arguments already known by the followers of the former Brazilian president.
Before, Araújo rejected the inclusion in the process of the so-called coup “draft”, found at the home of Bolsonaro’s former Justice Secretary, Anderson Torres, after the attacks on institutions on January 8. However, and despite being included in the case, several colleagues reminded him that the vote is only based on the meeting with the ambassadors.
The cause
Before the session, Bolsonaro maintained that if he is convicted, an injustice and an attack on democracy will have occurred: “My God, it is a great injustice. Tell me what I did against democracy, I always played within the constitutional rules,” said the former president, who has another 15 processes open before the electoral court. “They are trying me for a meeting with ambassadors, it’s ridiculous,” he added.
The TSE is studying a demand from the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) to disqualify Bolsonaro for the next eight years for alleged abuse of power and fraudulent use of public media. In July 2022, he organized a meeting with foreign diplomats and ambassadors at the Planalto Palace. According to this complaint, the former president would have used the meeting to spread, without evidence, accusations about the reliability of the 2022 elections.
The judicial process will resume on Friday with the votes of the magistrate and vice president of the TSE, Cármen Lúcia Antunes, the president of the Court, Alexandre de Moraes, and Kassio Nunes Marques. While just one vote would suffice to incapacitate Bolsonaro, the first two are expected to support the measure.
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