Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil, was politically disqualified this Friday, a decision that means that he will not be able to run for any elective office until 2030. The vote of Cármen Lúcia, a member of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), was decisive for form a 5-2 majority in favor of disbarment on a seven-member court.
“I announce to your excellencies that I am accompanying the rapporteur minister in the request to apply the sanction of ineligibility to the first investigated, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, and to declare the request inadmissible in relation to the second investigated, Walter Souza Braga Netto,” Lúcia said shortly after noon. Brazilian, in a decision followed with great expectation by the media and the Brazilian citizenry.
Bolsonaro is accused of having committed abuse of political power and misuse of the media during a meeting with ambassadors held in July 2022 in Brasilia in which he repeatedly spoke of the danger of fraud in the electronic voting system. Braga Netto, acquitted, was his vice-presidential candidate in an election closely won by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October 2022.
The former president will not be able to participate in the municipal elections of 2024 and 2028, nor in the general ones of 2026. Yes, he can be by 2030, if he wanted to: as “Folha de Sao Paulo” points out, the punishment is valid for eight years from the last elections, in 2022, but, due to the difference of four days between the dates of the elections, it could be presented again in 2030.
The disqualification forces the Brazilian right to look for a powerful candidate for the 2026 presidential elections, in which Lula does not rule out running for re-election, despite the fact that by then he will already be 81 years old.
“That meeting is not a photo on the wall, but a fact situated in a context,” said Benedito Gonçalves, the rapporteur member of the TSE who accused Bolsonaro of having failed in the duties of a public official and who voted earlier this week. already this Tuesday in favor of being declared “ineligible”.
Bolsonaro “ostensibly violated” the duties of the President of the Republic provided for in the Constitution, in particular that of “guaranteeing the free exercise of established political powers and rights and internal security.” According to Gonçalves, the former president “assumed an unjustified antagonism directly with the TSE, seeking to victimize and discredit the competence of the technical body to bring the TSE’s performance to absolute international discredit”.
In an interview with “Folha de São Paulo” a few days ago, Bolsonaro, an exponent of the Brazilian hard right, admitted that everything indicated that he would be disqualified, but added that he feels invulnerable “until proven otherwise” and that he will continue in the political arena.
“I have the silver bullet, but I’m not going to tell you, so you don’t get angry, in a good way. I have the silver bullet, but I’m not going to reveal it to you,” Bolsonaro told journalist Mónica Bergamo.
Aware that their political boss would be disqualified, Bolsonaro deputies will shortly present a bill to grant amnesty to all politicians who committed electoral crimes in 2022.
The bill would only exclude from amnesty those who have committed heinous crimes or terrorism, torture and racism. The motion, which is far from guaranteed to be approved in Congress, is a political response to the TSE’s decision.
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