Defense says in the TSE that Bolsonaro had no electoral gain in ‘lives’

The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) began judging this Tuesday (10) three actions, by the PDT and the PT, which seek to once again condemn Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to ineligibility. The parties accuse the former president of abuse of political power and misuse of the media in using the Alvorada and Planalto palaces to carry out live broadcasts over the internet, in which he promoted his candidacy for re-election and campaigned for other candidates .

The session was dedicated to oral arguments from lawyers for the parties, Bolsonaro and the Electoral Attorney General’s Office, which took a stand that the actions were unfounded. The trial was suspended and will only resume next Tuesday (17), with the votes of the ministers.

In this first part of the trial, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Tarcísio Vieira de Carvalho, said that the actions do not contain evidence that demonstrates the seriousness of the “lives” for the electoral dispute, nor the impact that the palace facilities had on a possible imbalance in the claim, a necessary condition for the penalty of ineligibility.

“Was the transmission scenario planned? Was the use of images fortuitous? Were the gifts invited by someone? What is the number of spectators? Where did the event take place in the palace, inside or outside? These are doubtful points”, began the lawyer.

Afterwards, he said that one of the meetings, in which governors and artists held an interview with the press to express support for Bolsonaro, took place outside the Palácio do Planalto.

“In the images, no symbol of the Republic appears, no flag, coat of arms, anything like that. There were no electoral gains nor was equality between candidates violated. What the law prohibits is the effective, concrete, real use of the state apparatus in favor of candidacies”, said Carvalho.

He also stated that the lives at Alvorada were not official events nor did they have a significant cost. One of the PDT’s accusations was that there was expenditure on servers for transmissions, as would be the case with the Libra interpreter. This was refuted by Bolsonaro’s defense, which proved that she participated voluntarily and for free, outside of working hours, as an act of “altruism” so that deaf people could understand the message.

He also said that the lives are the candidate’s private instrument to communicate with his audience. “Does a politician have to be unpopular? Based on what law? It was a democratic tool and accessible to any committed candidate,” he stated.

Before Bolsonaro’s lawyer, PT lawyer Ângelo Ferraro said in the gallery that there was an “obvious misuse of purpose”, due to the “systematic nature of the use of palace structures, which became true campaign committees”.

“These were events that occurred and their sole purpose was campaign acts. The residence can be used for internal arrangements, receiving interlocutors privately, with the aim of outlining political strategies and alliances. Jair Bolsonaro used the position of president, the public machine, at the expense of the treasury, to leverage his electoral campaign, transforming institutional acts into a true electoral rally”, he stated.

PDT lawyer, Ezikelly Barros, recalled that the electoral law allows the use of the residence for political meetings during the campaign, but not for public events. “The recording and transmission of electoral lives in the private facilities of Palácio do Planalto and Alvorada do characterize abuse and prohibited conduct, as they unbalanced the election, affected normality and above all the equality of opportunity for candidates who competed” , he said.

The electoral attorney general, Paulo Gonet, argued that the lives were not serious enough to impact the election and, therefore, the actions should be dismissed.

As shown by People’s Gazette, in 2014, the TSE allowed then-president Dilma Rousseff (PT) to record a “virtual chat” with voters on Facebook in the same library as the official residence of the Presidency. The current TSE judgment will show whether the current ministers will follow this precedent or change their understanding to convict Bolsonaro.

If he is punished in the current actions, his ineligibility will last until the 2030 elections. The former president is already prevented from running until then due to a June conviction, in which he was accused of abuse of political power for raising doubts about the integrity of the electronic voting system and the impartiality of the TSE to conduct the elections, in a meeting with ambassadors, in July last year.