Bolsonaro says he is waiting for a request to see a trial at the TSE – 06/23/2023 – Politics

Former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) has changed his tone regarding the judgment of his political rights in the TSE (Superior Electoral Court). After the tone of conformism of the last few days, when he complained about being the target of a “political judgment”, Bolsonaro declared that he believed in a request for review and cited the case law of the trial of Dilma-Temer, in 2017.

The former president has been in Porto Alegre since Thursday (22). This Friday (23), he will participate in an event for the affiliation of mayors to the PL at the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul.

Asked in an interview with Rádio Gaúcha if he believed that the trial would have a quick outcome, Bolsonaro mentioned the possibility of a request for an examination by Minister Raul Araújo Filho.

“The first minister to vote after the rapporteur, Minister Benedito [Gonçalves], is Minister Raul. He is known to be the jurist quite attached to the law. Despite being in an electoral political court, there is a possibility of requesting a view. This is good because it helps us to clarify the facts”, he said.

Regarding the course of the trial itself, Bolsonaro said that, “in a fair trial”, he hopes that his political rights will be maintained.

“There was case law in 2017. When the Dilma-Temer ticket was judged, the court did not accept other evidence attached to the process. Only the PSDB’s initial action in 2015 was valid for the trial. Thus, the ticket was kept legal. At that time Dilma Rousseff was no longer president, she was impeached the previous year and her political rights were maintained and thus Michel Temer remained president of the Republic”, said the former president.

The argument is that, in 2017, the TSE did not accept new facts when judging Dilma and Temer. For this reason, the evaluation of his case, for him, should only refer to the meeting with ambassadors, and not to later statements questioning the polls, for example.

In the 2017 judgment, most TSE ministers chose not to take into account accusations by businessmen from the construction company Odebrecht who mentioned donations to the Dilma and Temer campaigns and company spreadsheets on bribe payments.

“When something like that happens, jurisprudence is created. And the same thing should be done by the TSE, not accepting other possible evidence inserted in the initial PDT process back there”, said Bolsonaro.

If convicted, he will be able to run again in 2030, aged 75, thus staying away from three elections until then, including the next national one, in 2026.

Bolsonaro was also asked about January 8, 2023 and said he did not consider the events of that day a coup d’état. “What kind of scam is this on Sunday with empty chairs? What scam are you going to pull with little ladies with a Brazilian flag and a Bible under their arms?”, he said.

Bolsonaro was also asked about his management of the pandemic. In addition to repeating that he was not vaccinated against Covid-19 and that he does not intend to do so, the former president said that he favored medical autonomy and that the effectiveness of medicines “many times by chance”.

“How many died [de Covid-19] in penitentiaries? Almost nobody. Because they took a medicine called ivermectin, which was supposed to be boring. It might work, it might not, I’m not going to be the one to have the final say. I gave autonomy to the doctor,” he said.

It is not true that almost no one has died of Covid-19 in penitentiaries.

A survey by the National Council of Justice counted 661 deaths from Covid in the prison system among prisoners and civil servants by March 2022, even though they are among the priority vaccine groups and are not, for the most part, at the most critical age for deaths from the disease.

In January 2022, the number of deaths among prisoners increased by 225% compared to the month of the previous year – from 31 to 117.