Brazil’s electoral justice on Thursday authorized the trial against former president Jair Bolsonaro in one of the processes in which he may be sentenced to disqualification to be a candidate and to hold public office.
The examining magistrate of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Benedito Gonçalves, gave the green light for the proceedings to begin against Bolsonaro for attacking the veracity of the electoral system and electronic ballot boxes during an official act held before dozens of foreign ambassadors in Brasilia in July 2022.
According to the accusation of the electoral prosecutor’s office in response to a complaint by the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), Bolsonaro should be disqualified from being a candidate for having committed an abuse of political and economic power and disseminating false news and data without evidence about the Brazilian electoral system.
Former President Bolsonaro (2019-2022) of the Liberal Party failed to defeat President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party in controversial elections last October.
Several independent analysts spoke of electoral fraud without the TSE finding it necessary to investigate these charges officially.
Upon releasing the case for trial, Gonçalves published a report detailing all the process stages, including the closing arguments of the prosecution and the defense.
Thus, it is now up to the president of the Superior Electoral Court, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, to schedule the trial in a plenary session, as reported by the state-owned news agency Agencia Brasil de Notícias.
The meeting under investigation occurred in July 2022, when Bolsonaro was a pre-candidate for re-election.
The former president’s defense alleges that no irregularities were committed in the meeting in which he denounced the electoral system before the ambassadors in Brasilia.
The Electoral Public Prosecutor’s Office understands that Bolsonaro should be ineligible for abusing political power and misusing the media since the public media structure broadcasted the meeting.
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