Judges ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over ‘appalling lies’
The political future of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been cast into doubt after electoral judges voted to ban him from running for office for eight years for abusing his powers and peddling “immoral” and “appalling lies” during last year’s acrimonious election.
Five of the superior electoral court’s seven judges voted to banish the far-right radical, who relentlessly vilified the South American country’s democratic institutions during his unsuccessful battle to win a second term in power. Two voted against the decision.
The vote means Bolsonaro, who lost last year’s election to his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will only be able to seek elected office again in 2030, when he will be 75.
The move to strip Bolsonaro of his political rights was based on his highly controversial decision to summon foreign ambassadors to his official residence last July, 11 weeks before the election’s 2 October first round.
At the meeting, Bolsonaro made baseless claims against Brazil’s electronic voting system which caused a public outcry and were denounced by one supreme court judge as politically-motivated disinformation.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer argued that while his client’s tone at the meeting with the envoys might have been inappropriate and “excessively blunt”, he had merely been seeking to “improve” Brazil’s voting system.
However, casting his vote against Bolsonaro, Judge Floriano de Azevedo Marques claimed Bolsonaro had tried to obtain an unfair advantage in the election with his “abnormal” and “immoral” actions. In belittling Brazil’s democracy in front of the foreign audience, the judge accused Bolsonaro of making their country appear like “a little banana republic”.
Judge Benedito Gonçalves, who also voted against Bolsonaro, slammed the ex-president’s “deceitful monologue” and “appalling lies”, arguing they had been designed to “arouse a state of collective paranoia” among voters.
In the run-up to last year’s profoundly divisive election, the Donald Trump-admiring populist repeatedly attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines, insinuating he might reject the result if he deemed the vote unfair. [Continue reading…]