Global Courant
Global Courant
—
Brazil’s top electoral court has barred former President Jair Bolsonaro from running for political office until 2030 after finding him guilty of abuse of power and abuse of the public media during last year’s election campaign.
Five of the seven judges found the former president guilty, effectively ending any hope of a political comeback in the upcoming 2026 election. Two of the judges voted against the decision, which will prevent Bolsonaro from running for public office for eight years.
The case stems from a meeting Bolsonaro held with foreign ambassadors in July 2022, in which he spread false information about Brazil’s electoral system and questioned its credibility ahead of last year’s troubled elections. The meeting was streamed live by official television channels and on YouTube.
YouTube removed the live stream of the event for not complying with its fake news policy.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over the court, was the last to cast his vote. “Let’s reaffirm our faith in our democracy and the rule of law,” he said after voting in favor of the sentencing verdict.
Moraes added that the vote would show Brazilian authorities that they will not tolerate “criminal extremism that attacks the power of the state, fake news, disinformation to try to mislead voters.”
Bolsonaro has denied any allegations. Speaking to Brazilian radio station Itatiaia on Friday, Bolsonaro said he planned to appeal the court’s decision.
The far-right politician lost the election by the narrowest margin in decades to current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In riots on January 8, pro-Bolsonaro protesters broke into government buildings in Brasilia after weeks of demonstrations over the election results.
The Superior Electoral Court case began with a lawsuit filed by Brazil’s Democratic Workers’ Party against both Bolsonaro and Walter Braga Netto, his running mate in the 2022 elections. The majority of the judges voted to find Braga Netto not guilty.
According to a report by judge Benedito Gonçalves, the former president is said to have said during the meeting with the ambassadors that the 2022 elections may be compromised by fraud.
Bolsonaro also allegedly said that voting machines had changed voters’ choices in favor of his opponent in 2018, and that Brazil’s voting machines are unverifiable, while insinuating that electoral and judicial authorities were protecting “terrorists,” the report added.
Such allegations of flaws in the electoral system have all been denied by Brazil’s electoral authorities.
The Superior Electoral Court case is one of many cases against the former president.
