Bolsonaro must appeal to the STF and case can be taken to the OAS

The trial on the ineligibility of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) is scheduled to continue this Tuesday (27). The session should resume with the reading of the vote of the rapporteur, Minister Benedito Gonçalves, in the Electoral Court. Faced with the great possibility of an unfavorable outcome for the former representative, the defense must also appeal to the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

In addition, Bolsonaro’s team is preparing a document to file a representation against Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF, at the Organization of American States (OAS). The information was provided by columnist Paulo Cappelli, from the portal metropolises. The intention is for parliamentarians allied with the former president to sign the representation before it is filed with the OAS. The strategy with the action is to internationalize the case and pass it on to other foreign bodies. The OAS is made up of 35 independent nations in South, Central and North America.

With regard to the STF, Tarcísio Vieira de Carvalho, the former president’s lawyer, said that the strategy should be to argue that there was a curtailment of the defense of the former representative due to the fact that the rapporteur, Minister Benedito Gonçalves, had included in the process evidence of which she had no opportunity to express himself.

The TSE corregidor complied with the request made by the PDT, the party that filed the lawsuit against Bolsonaro, and included in the request for indictment the “draft of the coup” found in the house of former Minister of Justice Anderson Torres. The document provided for the establishment of a Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO), a device that confers extraordinary powers on the President of the Republic. With the decision, new facts were added to the process that were not in the initial action presented by the PDT.

“The action is from August, and dates back to July. In December, the minister stabilizes the demand and says that the opposite object is the meeting. When January 8 comes and those findings, the PDT takes the opportunity to graft all this into the process, saying that they are developments of the original facts, which in the defense’s view is not correct”, explained Bolsonaro’s defense representative last Thursday -Friday (22).

Also according to Carvalho, the TSE should adopt the same understanding that did not revoke the ticket of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and Michel Temer (MDB), in 2017, when the Court did not admit the inclusion of elements that were not in the file since the beginning of the process.

He stressed that January 8 and the meeting with ambassadors are separate events. “[O 8 de Janeiro] It’s not the result of a meeting with ambassadors, with all due respect. The evidentiary instruction had already begun, the testimony of Chancellor Carlos França had already been heard in December. Before the emergence of facts. The process has not gone backwards. Here there is a restriction of the right of defense. This draft is not a new document. It is a new fact of January 13th of the following year”.

With an Electoral Judicial Investigation Action (Aije) filed by the PDT, the acronym accuses Bolsonaro of committing abuse of political power and misuse of the media by calling ambassadors to a meeting – which took place in July 2022 – to speak and criticize electronic voting machines .

In the action required by the PDT, there is a request that Walter Braga Netto, candidate for vice on the ticket next to Bolsonaro, also be condemned. However, there is an expectation that the military will be spared and maintain their political rights. The party is studying to launch him in the dispute for mayor of Rio de Janeiro, in 2024.

Bolsonaro claims that this is a “political judgment”

Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) said on Sunday (25), in an interview with Rádio Bandeirantesthat the TSE judgment is “political”, but that a possible negative result “will not be the end of the world”.

“It’s a political judgment, the action wasn’t even supposed to be accepted… Because I met with ambassadors… It’s a joke! And there is a case law from 2017, judgment of the Dilma-Temer ticket, which simply ceased to exist now for this judgment of mine. So, we’ll see what happens, I’m not going to advance the result here, but it won’t be the end of the world, “he said.

In the same interview, Bolsonaro explained the content of the meeting and criticized the lack of freedom of expression on certain topics, such as the polls and the vaccine against Covid-19, and the vague and broad interpretation of the TSE on what would be attacks on democracy.

“At the meeting with ambassadors, we talked about the Brazilian electoral system. Two months earlier, Minister Fachin, who was at the TSE, met with ambassadors and gave his opinion. He ended the meeting with ambassadors by saying more or less the following: ‘as soon as the results of the polls are presented, their respective head of state must recognize the winner of the elections’. I invited the ambassadors, that this is my policy, not Fachin’s or anyone else’s, and I spoke about the ballot boxes. Talking about the polls in Brazil, they say you are attacking. When you talk about vaccines, you are a denialist. When you talk about the censorship project, you are attacking the Democratic State of Law”, commented the former president.

Last week, in Porto Alegre, Bolsonaro called for a fair trial and contested that the January 8 acts were an attempted coup d’état. “They put all of that on my account. But what kind of blow is this given on a Sunday and without anyone being deposed? What is this coup without a weapon, without an army? With little old ladies with flags and bibles under their arms”, he questioned.

PL studies strategies in case of Bolsonaro’s ineligibility

The PL is studying some strategies if the TSE imposes ineligibility on the former president. One of them will be trying to get Bolsonaro to unify the right to attract votes in next year’s municipal elections. Previously, the acronym had already said that it intends to work to elect between 1,000 and 1,300 mayors in various regions in the 2024 elections.

In addition, in this case, the acronym must also use Bolsonaro’s image in the next general elections, scheduled for 2026. If the ineligibility is confirmed, some members of the PL argue that the party should support the governor of São Paulo and former minister of Infrastructure, Tarcísio de Gomes Freitas (Republicans), to take Bolsonaro’s place in the election.

At first, it was speculated that former first lady Michele Bolsonaro could take her husband’s place in the presidential race, but this hypothesis was discarded and now the party is considering launching it to the Senate.

Dino claims that ineligibility is the “reasonable and expected” result

The Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, spoke about the trial in Lisbon, this Monday (26), and said that the former president’s ineligibility is the “reasonable and expected” result for the trial. Dino went to Portugal to participate in the Legal Forum.

“It seems to me that the facts are very serious. It is not up to me, as an authority of the Executive branch, to anticipate the verdict of the Judiciary. But as a legal professional for more than three decades, it seems to me, with the evidence increasing every day, of undue interference in democracy, is the reasonable and expected result,” said the government minister of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, according to a statement published by the newspaper The globe.