Opinion: amid allegations of a stolen election, Brazilians have been protesting in the millions in over 300 locations nationwide

“Until a neutral body thoroughly investigates this accusation of electoral fraud, it seems that the electoral high court TSE can claim as much as it wants.”

“They won’t believe it”

(Opinion) Amid allegations of a stolen election, Brazilians have been protesting in their millions in over 300 locations nationwide during the weekend.

Brazilians are in the streets protesting against what they call ‘the biggest electoral fraud in Brazil’.

“One cannot at least question the result of the elections. Whoever questions it can be arrested; this is not democratic; it is a dictatorship. So-called democratic institutions persecute the people,” said one protestor asked by The Rio Times.

Economist Marcos Cintra (União Brasil), former secretary of the Federal Revenue and vice-president of Senator Soraya Thronicke (União Brasil) for the Presidency of the Republic, had his Twitter profile censored this Sunday (Nov. 6).

The account was suspended one day after Cintra questioned the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) about counting the 2022 elections.

The Brazilian Justice has not disclosed the information about the process.

On Saturday, Cintra wrote in his Twitter profile that he disagrees with the current president Jair Bolsonaro (PL, right) and considers him incapable of running the country.

(Belo Horizonte on the weekend)

However, the economist stated that his questions about the investigation “deserve answers”.

One of the arguments put forward by the protesting Brazilians is that fraud in the ballot boxes showed Jair Bolsonaro with 0 (zero) votes.

Cintra says he sees no explanation for this result in “hundreds of ballot boxes” that he would have checked.

“There are other hundreds, if not thousands of ballot boxes with equally improbable votes. Interestingly, there is no single ballot box in the country where Bolsonaro had 100% of the vote.”

(Rio de Janeiro on the weekend)

“And if there is suspicion in a single ballot box, they fall on the entire system,” the vice presidential candidate for the 2022 election stated.

SUSPENSION OF ACCOUNTS

Since the elections, the TSE has been suspending social media accounts that support the truckers’ demonstrations or point out alleged fraud in the polls.

Almost all the Court’s decisions are secret.

On Friday (Nov. 4), the federal deputy elected with the most votes in the country, Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG), also had his Twitter account suspended.

Ferreira posted the live made by Argentine Journalist Fernando Cerimedo in which the journalist said that versions before the 2020 model of the electronic ballot box would not be auditable and counted fewer votes for President Bolsonaro.

Like Marcos Cintra’s profile, Ferreira’s page appears “withheld” by judicial decision.

“I transcribed what the Argentine said on Twitter, and that’s probably why they took down my account, with almost 2 million followers,” Nikolas said on Instagram. He defined the decision as “surreal” and said he had contacted lawyers to learn about the process.

The next day, on Saturday (Nov. 5), the TSE also asked for the suspension of Nikolas Ferreira’s Instagram profile.

The president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, has warned that those who “criminally” do not accept the results “will be treated like criminals.”

(Nikolas Ferreira, the federal deputy elected with the most votes in the country)

However, peaceful demonstrations should not be confused with anti-democratic acts.

Nor is democracy built on censorship.

The people are the legitimate holders of power and expect answers, not the loss of freedom.

SUPREME ELECTORAL COURT WITH ITS BACK TO THE WALL

Pro-Bolsonaro voters’ demonstrations began when the Superior Electoral Court TSE declared Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT, left) the presidential election winner on Sunday (Oct 30).

The problem is that millions of Brazilians do not believe or trust the TSE and say the electoral high Court is part of the electoral fraud scheme in this presidential election. That is why they believe whatever the TSE says is a lie.

(Curitiba this weekend)

Until a neutral body thoroughly investigates this accusation of electoral fraud, it seems that the TSE can claim as much as it wants.

It has lost all credibility for millions upon millions of Brazilians.

They should face this fact sooner rather than later if they do not want to risk a full-blown civil uprising with all the terrible consequences that such a one could entail.

The TSE may consider itself important and untouchable, but the fact is that it no longer enjoys the trust of a large part of the population.

A rapidly growing number of Brazilians believe in electoral fraud, causing them to launch a significant protest movement that could turn into something worse. Into something much worse.

Pretending that everything is fine, denigrating the Bolsonarists, calling them Nazis, suspending their social media accounts, ridiculing them, and igniting a warfare campaign against them will not work this time.

The rage is too great.

And more importantly, the Bolsonarists are a considerable movement and unmatched in numbers.

The sooner the highest courts (STF and TSE) admit that (too) many Brazilians doubt their authority, rightly or wrongly, the better this incipient uprising will go.

Those who think they have to put these people in jail have not understood how democracy works and provoke only one thing: more outrage and the beginning of violence.

(Belém, Pará state)

“They must be duly impeached, Mr. Bolsonaro and the representative of the PRF (Federal Highway Police) and these fascist groups that block the highways because they do not want to accept the result of the elections,” he said.

Let this astonishing sentence sink in for a moment.

These people must be punished because they have lost faith in the institutions and therefore rise up?

The sentence of this politician could have come directly from the mouth of a Venezuelan or Nicaraguan official.