BRASILIA, June 22, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro
risks losing his right to run for office for eight years, as Brazil's
electoral court begins delivering its ruling Thursday on charges stemming
from his unfounded allegations against the voting system.
The Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) is trying the former president on
charges he abused his office and misused state media when, in July 2022, he
convened foreign diplomats for a meeting in which he insisted Brazil's
electronic voting machines were susceptible to large-scale fraud.
Armed with a PowerPoint presentation but no hard evidence, Bolsonaro spent
nearly an hour making his case to the assembled ambassadors at the
presidential palace briefing, which was broadcast live on public TV.
Prosecutors say the event violated electoral law, given that it was held in
the middle of Bolsonaro's polarizing campaign for Brazil's October 2022
elections, which he narrowly lost to his leftist arch-rival, now-President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Insiders say Bolsonaro will almost certainly be convicted, taking him out of
the next presidential elections, in 2026.
The 68-year-old ex-army captain reiterated Wednesday that he had done nothing
wrong.
"There was no criticism or attack on the electoral system" at the meeting, he
told journalists.
"I simply explained how elections work in Brazil."
But he appeared to be coming to terms with his likely fate.
"We know the signs aren't good, but I'm keeping calm," he said Sunday.
"We're not going to panic over the outcome... We want to stay alive, keep
contributing to the country."
- Bolsonaro absent -
Bolsonaro is not expected to attend the audience, which opens at 9:00 am
(1200 GMT) in Brasilia.
He will be following it from the southern state of Porto Alegre, where he
will be holding political meetings, his press office told AFP.
The TSE's seven judges are unlikely to finish reading their rulings Thursday,
sources said. Further audiences have been scheduled for June 27 and 29 if
necessary -- and the case could be extended even longer.
Bolsonaro, who trailed Lula throughout the 2022 race, said at the meeting
with diplomats that he wanted to "fix the flaws" in the electronic voting
system Brazil has used since 1996 to ensure the "transparency" of the
elections.
"We still have time to resolve the problem, with the help of the armed
forces," he said.
The accusations surged to the forefront again on January 8, when his
supporters ran riot in the presidential palace, Supreme Court and Congress a
week after Lula's inauguration, insisting the elections had been fraudulent
and demanding the military intervene.
Both Bolsonaro's unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud and the attack
on the capital drew widespread comparisons to his political role model Donald
Trump and the latter's bid to hang onto power after his loss in the 2020 US
presidential election.
- 'Large base' -
Bolsonaro, who spent three months in the US state of Florida after his
election loss, has made few public appearances since returning to Brazil in
March to serve as honorary president of his Liberal Party (PL).
But he remains a powerful force in Brazilian politics, where conservative
parties hold a strong majority in Congress.
Bolsonaro "has a large base that is very much influenced by him," said
political scientist Marco Antonio Teixeira, of the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
Even if convicted, "he'll act behind the scenes and use his vote-winning
power and influence to help other candidates," he said.
But Bolsonaro faces a raft of other legal woes, from five Supreme Court
investigations that could potentially send him to jail -- including over the
January 8 attacks -- to police probes into allegations of a faked Covid-19
vaccination certificate and diamond jewelry snuck into the country from Saudi
Arabia.