Excluding Bolsonaro from the electoral arena is self-defense – 06/22/2023 – Bruno Boghossian

Jair Bolsonaro made life easier for TSE ministers who began to judge him. For years, the former president led a daylight conspiracy to overthrow the credibility of the country’s voting system and left behind the evidence of a plan that aimed to keep him in power even in defeat.

In practice, Bolsonaro tried to defraud the process of choosing a new president. To do so, he abused his position: he called on the Army to interfere in the organization of the election and used official tools to spread false information. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, it was conduct that caused a “shudder in popular support for the very existence of elections”.

As president, Bolsonaro spent four years in an effort to weaken democratic controls and destabilize a system that threatened the renewal of his powers. As a candidate, he violated the rules of the electoral game to stay in office. Excluding him from that arena temporarily is the least the TSE can do.

The penalty that the court must apply to Bolsonaro is not just a punishment for past infractions. Making the former president ineligible for eight years is also a way of blocking the direct participation in the electoral process of a person who acted to destroy him.

It would be naive to believe that, with the path clear to run for Planalto again in 2026, Bolsonaro would miraculously convert himself into a devotee of electronic voting machines. Elected for another term, he would hardly put aside his coup delusions and his campaign to circumvent the rules that limit the power of the president.

Even if ineligibility seems bitter, eight years will certainly not make Bolsonaro a faithful enforcer of the institutional order. The former president operates on a frequency that favors confrontation with this principle, as suggested by the persecution speech he rehearses in the face of probable condemnation. If he returns to the polls in 2030, he will probably come back in the same outfit.

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.