Brazil Prosecutor’s Office opens preliminary investigation of Defense Minister for threats to democracy

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office has ordered on Wednesday (29) the opening of a preliminary investigation to determine if the Minister of Defense, Walter Braga Netto, committed a crime of threats against democracy when he asserted that the 2022 presidential elections would not be held if the constitutional proposal for printed ballots did not go ahead.

Last June, the newspaper ‘Estadão’ published that Braga Netto made it known to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, in the presence also of the Brazilian Armed Forces’ highest command, that the 2022 elections would not be held if the amendment to the Constitution for the printed ballot was not approved.

The Prosecutor General, Augusto Aras, has explained that this information from the Brazilian newspaper offers “reasonable indications” that a “political-administrative infraction” could have been committed, for which he has decided to initiate a preliminary investigation after accepting a complaint filed by a group of federal deputies before the Supreme Court.

For his part, Braga Netto has consistently denied that any such thing occurred and has described the matter as an “invention”. According to the Brazilian press, the Minister of Defense, through an interlocutor, told Lira that “if there are no verifiable elections, there will be no elections”.

Behind closed doors, Lira acknowledged that the episode was “very serious” and told President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been spreading unfounded theories about electoral fraud if this printed voting law was not approved, that he would not count on him to carry out any act that contravenes the Constitution.

This proposed amendment to the Constitution has been defended with particular zeal, and even with some virulence, by President Bolsonaro, who went so far as to say after the Lower House voted against it that the deputies either “do not believe in the honesty of elections”, or were “blackmailed”.

In recent months, Bolsonaro has criticized the electronic voting model, which he points to as responsible for the electoral fraud that, he accuses without evidence, would be committed against him in the presidential elections scheduled for October 2022, in which, according to polls, he would be defeated in the first round by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Already in May, Bolsonaro was blunt when he stated during one of his direct messages on social networks that “there will be a printed vote in 2022 and that’s the end of it, no more talk. If there is not, it is a sign that there will be no elections. I think the message has already been given.”.

Very similar statements, which added to his attacks to the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), have led him to be investigated by the Supreme Court in a case of dissemination of false news against democratic institutions.