1970-01-01 02:00:00
The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) resumes this Tuesday (27) the trial against former president Jair Bolsonaro for alleged abuse of power, which could make him ineligible for eight years.
The TSE judges him for attacks against the electronic voting system in Brazil during a meeting with ambassadors in July 2022, three months before being defeated at the polls by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
This Tuesday’s session, scheduled for 7 pm, will begin with the vote of the case’s rapporteur, Judge Benedito Gonçalves, who will be the first to present his opinion among the seven members of the TSE, based in Brasília.
If the vote is not completed, a third plenary session is scheduled for Thursday.
In the first session of the trial, last Thursday, the Attorney General’s Office asked that the former president (2019-2022) be declared “unelectable” due to “abuse of political power and misuse of the media”.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, at the meeting with Bolsonaro ambassadors, “he tried to give the wrong impression that the voting process” in Brazil “is obscure”, conducive to “manipulations”.
– Bolsonaro: “I will not despair” –
In his speech to ambassadors at the Palácio do Alvorada in 2022, Bolsonaro stated without evidence that he was trying to “correct flaws” in the current electronic voting machine system with a possible participation of the Armed Forces.
The former captain claimed that the alleged vulnerability of the system could serve to manipulate the election result against him.
The 68-year-old far-right politician denies committing any crime, although he has no confidence in an acquittal.
“The trend, what everyone says, is that I will become ineligible”, declared Bolsonaro in an interview published this Tuesday by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. “I will not despair”, “I will continue to do my part”, he added.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Tarcisio Vieira, on Thursday compared the case to that of the famous Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus, unjustly condemned in France at the end of the 19th century, asking that a similar “mistake” not be committed.
– Appeal to the Supreme Court –
The lawyer anticipated that in case of conviction, the defense will appeal the sentence to the Federal Supreme Court.
A political disqualification would leave Bolsonaro out of the next presidential elections.
“In 2026, if I’m alive by then and eligible, if it’s the will of the people, we’ll run again for the Presidency,” Bolsonaro said last week.
Practically half of Brazilians voted for the former president in the second round of elections in October, won by Lula with a narrow lead.
The TSE’s decision will be the first of a series that must still be taken in relation to the former president who responds to more than ten processes in the electoral court.
He is also the target of five investigations at the Federal Supreme Court, with sentences subject to imprisonment, including his alleged role as the mastermind behind the attack on the headquarters of the Three Powers by his supporters on January 8 in Brasília.
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© Agence France-Presse
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