Former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) could lose his political rights for eight years if convicted by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in a trial scheduled to start next Thursday (22). Walter Braga Netto (Liberal Party), candidate for vice president along with Bolsonaro in 2022, is also accused in the same process, which has two additional dates for trial if the first day is not enough: 27th and 29th also this month.
The process began with an Electoral Judicial Investigation Action filed by the PDT (Democratic Labor Party) in August 2022, bringing as an issue Bolsonaro’s famous meeting with ambassadors, held on July 18, 2022. On the occasion, the former president presented a series of lies about electronic voting machines to representatives of other nations, repeating several arguments that he had been raising before the event.
"It is undeniable that Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro took advantage of the event to broadcast the recording of the speech for electoral purposes, inseparable from the 2022 election. This is because the attack on the Electoral Justice and on the electronic voting system is part of his electoral campaign strategy", says the initial request of the lawsuit.
As it is an electoral issue, therefore, the judgment will not focus on the issue of the possible violation of the Democratic Rule of Law by attacking the voting system in Brazil, even though the issue may appear laterally in the votes of ministers. The lawsuit by the PDT (Democratic Labor Party) claims that Bolsonaro engaged in two behaviors that lead to ineligibility, according to the Brazilian electoral law: abuse of economic power and misuse of social communication media.
Abuse
The abuse of political power is not to be confused with the abuse of economic power and occurs in situations where the holder of public office uses the structure and state resources to cause imbalance in the electoral race. Or, in the words of the Democratic Labor Party's lawsuit, "when the public agent, taking advantage of a functional condition and in a manifest deviation from purpose, unbalances the dispute in favor of his candidacy or of third parties".
In the Democratic Labor Party's argument, as the attacks on the electronic voting machines were part of Bolsonaro's political platform, with the aim of both mobilizing his supporters and raising votes, the meeting with the ambassadors, held at the Planalto Palace and broadcast on TV Brasil, falls under the legal definition of abuse of political power: "Jair Messias Bolsonaro distorted the performance of the act to propagate his campaign program, which among few things, includes attacks on the integrity of the electoral process as the main support of speech".
"What happened was the demonstration and subsequent profusion of ideals linked to the Investigator's candidacy for re-election, in the context of a meeting that should be umbilically linked to the public interest", complements the request.
Misuse
The accusation of media misuse is related precisely to TV Brasil, a public broadcaster that is part of Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), a federal public company that owns a media conglomerate in Brazil, created in 2007 to provide public broadcasting services and manage federal public radio and television stations in the country. Another point raised by the Democratic Labor Party's request is that, in addition to public transmission, the speech – based on fake news – was released on several social network profiles.
"It is undeniable that the broadcast of videos that carry high sensitivity material before the electorate, especially when it comes to facts that are known to be untrue, on social networks, has sufficient disapproval to characterize the seriousness of the act. The investigated used the Planalto Palace, as well as the entire state apparatus, to develop and disseminate the content verbalized at the aforementioned meeting, which in itself reveals an undeniable violation of the principle of isonomy", says the document.
Coup draft
In January of this year, the Democratic Labor Party asked for the inclusion of a document found in the possession of Anderson Torres, a former minister in the government of Jair Bolsonaro, in the electoral action regarding the meeting with the ambassadors.
The document, informally called the “coup draft”, was a draft of a presidential decree that would allow Bolsonaro to establish a State of Defense and carry out an intervention at the headquarters of the Superior Electoral Court in the event of defeat in the elections. According to the Democratic Labor Party, the document is yet another indication that the attack on Electoral Justice and electronic voting machines was part of the Bolsonarist political platform.
The Superior Electoral Court accepted the inclusion of the document in the lawsuit. In testimony to the court in March, Torres said the document was "junk" and that he did not know the origin of the text.
