Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro’s political future has been thrown into turmoil after a judgement by the country’s highest electoral court banned him from running for office for eight years for abusing his powers and peddling immoral and appalling lies during last year’s election, which he lost his rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
A meeting gone wrong
The move to stop the 68-year-old former president from seeking public office was based on his highly controversial decision to summon foreign ambassadors to his official residence on 11th July 2022, just two weeks before the country’s first round of voting.
At the meeting, Bolsonaro made groundless claims against Brazil’s electronic voting system, which caused anger among the public. A supreme court judge also slammed the comments as politically motivated disinformation.
His lawyer argued that while his client’s tone at the meeting with the envoys might have been inappropriate, he had merely sought to improve Brazil’s voting system.
However, in his judgement, Judge Floriano de Azevedo Marques, who voted against Bolsonaro, said that while criticising Brazil’s democracy in front of a foreign audience, former president made their country appear like a banana republic.
It was a split verdict among a seven-judge bench, with five judges voting to banish the former president and two voting against the decision. Bolsonaro also became the first president to be banned due to election offences.
A failed coup?
In the run-up to last year’s profoundly divisive election, the former president constantly attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines (EVM), indicating that he might reject the result if he deemed the vote unfair.
This is what he did once the results went against him, and on 8th January 2024, thousands of Jair Bolsonaro supporters stormed and ransacked key public institutions like parliament, the supreme court and the presidential palace hoping to overturn the election.
The investigation into the unprecedented violence revealed that people close to Bolsonaro had discussed possible ways to arrange a military intervention to remove Lula from power.
According to reports, a document found in the phone of Bolsonaro’s aide, Lt Col Mauro Cid Barbosa, revealed a detailed plan for a coup. According to that plan, before leaving office, the former president would send a report summarising his grievances to military chiefs, who would then appoint a special administrator tasked with re-establishing the constitutional order.
Bolsonaro’s loss is whose gain?
Even though controversial, Jair Bolsonaro remains a dominant figure in Brazilian politics, but this ban means he will only be able to contest for the presidency again in 2030 when he will be 75 years old.
Hence, who would get the support of the 58 million votes obtained by Bolsonaro in last year’s election would be interesting.
One of the names doing the round among the political circle is of former first lady and Jair’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, who may contest as a presidential candidate in the 2026 presidential election.
Another name doing rounds is TarcÃsio de Freitas, the current governor of Sao Paulo who also served as infrastructure minister in Bolsonaro’s government. Governor of Minas Gerais Romeu Zema is also considered a possibility.
However, Friday’s judgement is not the end of trouble for Bolsonaro. In fact, it may only be a start as he also faces criminal investigations into the 8th January riots, seeking to take possession of expensive jewellery gifted by Saudi Arabia and faking coronavirus vaccination certificates.
