2023-06-30 17:59:14
Everything happened as expected. The heavenly prayers of Jair Bolsonaro did not move the Tribunal Superior Electoral (TSE)who already has a majority to condemn him to eight years of disqualification for the exercise of public office. The former president was found guilty of have abused their power by publicly questioning the transparency of the voting system before the diplomatic community by four votes to one. There are still two judges to express their vote, but the result will not change.
The foundations of the votes had an unthinkable forcefulness a year ago, when the extreme right ruled. “What could be more serious than making fun of the democratic regime before foreign representatives and say that one of its pillars, free elections, is falsified and cunningly manipulated? A guy can be a flat earther, be part of the infinity edge club, but he cannot preach that as a public school teacher,” judge Floriano Marques told his colleagues. Marques did nothing more than endorse the concepts of the trial rapporteur, André Ramos Tavares. Bolsonaro, had pointed out last Tuesday, “made serious accusations without being supported by a minimum of evidence to support such conjectures, incorporating inventions, crude lies, fabricated facts, serious distortions into his speech. ” The former Army captain only found the leniency of Raul Araújo, one of the magistrates closest to his creed.The intervention of the then president before the diplomatic community, he said, “was not so great as to justify the extreme measure of ineligibility.”
Bolsonaro oscillated between pessimism and the request for compassion and the expectation of a last-minute miracle. On Thursday night, he prayed that “God touch the heart” of Alexandre de Moraes, the main authority of the TSE and its sworn enemy when he was president. “They said that he had interfered in the election results. If I had interfered, I should have won? Is meeting to talk about the electoral system a capital crime? “He also asked the court for a new” fair trial “. But knowing that his words would fall in a vacuum, he added, also defiantly: “the game is not over”.
A country split in two
The elections last October showed the extent to which society is divided around the figure of Bolsonaro. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva he won by less than two points. His rival could not tolerate him and he left the country, leaving the transition ceremony and part of his political capital in the air. Facing trial, about 37% of Brazilians expressed their solidarity with the former captain. That latent support is still a disturbing sign for the political scientist Fernando Limongi. “I don’t like Bolsonaro, I think he’s terrible, I can’t understand how someone votes for him. But he’s a political actor with a lot of support. Saying ‘let’s pretend that Bolsonaro doesn’t exist’ is not going to solve the problem.” In this sense, he remarked that the overcoming of the ultra-right must take place completely at the polls and not through court rulings. “If your political rights are going to be withdrawn, it has to be something very solid and well-founded so that it is not seen as revenge or a partisanship of the Judiciary. The Judiciary is not taking this care. It did not do so throughout the Lava Jato, which culminated in the impeachment (of Dilma Rousseff), nor in the imprisonment of Lula, and it is not doing it again. This ends up diminishing the legitimacy of this type of action.”
Bolsonarism’s options
The extreme right will try to promote an amnesty for its leader in Congress and, at the same time, capitalize on the disqualification. According to Bela Megale, columnist for the Rio de Janeiro newspaper The globe, the Liberal Party (PL), the group that promoted his candidacy last year, hopes to win the municipal elections next year. But for that, he needs Bolsonaro not to “throw in the towel” as happened when he lost the second electoral round. Valdemar Costa Neto, the main leader of the PL, believes that if the former president plunges back into depression Bolsonarism’s plans will be threatened.
Meanwhile, Mónica Bergamo, columnist for the São Paulo newspaper Sheet, assured that the “closest core” to the former president “is already discussing with campaign professionals the viability of names” that could replace him in the 2026 general elections, including the governors of the states of Paraná, Ratinho Jr, Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema, San Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, and, in addition, Senator Tereza Cristina. In turn, Bolsonaro himself once again raised the possibility of have his wife Michele run on his behalf.
Saint Paul Forum
The final instances of the trial against Bolsonaro found Lula as host of the Forum of San Pablo, an instance that usually meets periodically to the leftist forces in the region. There, the president lavished praise on the extinct Fidel Castro y Hugo Chavez. “It’s better to have a colleague of ours making mistakes that we can criticize than someone on the right who doesn’t even allow us the space to criticize,” she said. The Forum of San Pablo was precisely one of the great demons in the stories of Bolsonarism.
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