Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) was stripped of his political rights this Friday by the electoral Court, which found him guilty of “abuses of power” during the campaign that last year brought progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power.
With this decision, adopted by five votes to two in the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the 68-year-old far-right leader will not be able to run for elective positions or hold positions in public administration for a period of eight years. counted from October 2022, when the elections won by Lula were held.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) affirmed that the decision this Friday of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to leave him ineligible until 2030 for abuse of power and misuse of public media in the 2022 elections was a “stabbed in the back.”
“Recently I received a stab in the belly and now they have stabbed me in the back with political disqualification for abuse of political power,” said the ultra-right leader in Brazil in an immediate reaction to the decision of the highest electoral authority and to the remember the attack he suffered in 2018.
In a statement to the press in the city of Belo Horizonte, Bolsonaro said that he will continue to work “within the four lines” of the Constitution, something that, according to him, is an “effort” that “did not have its due value recognized.”
“Today I suffer a disqualification, I do not like to become ineligible in politics. That sentence is not mine: nobody kills, nobody dies, ”she added.
Bolsonaro was stripped of his political rights for eight years by the electoral court, in which, by five votes to two, he was found guilty of “abuses of power” during the campaign in which he was defeated by the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The 68-year-old far-right leader, who had already expressed his intention to contest the 2026 presidential elections, will not be able to run for elective positions or hold positions in public administration for a period of eight years, counted from October 2022.
The decision, for the same reason, allows him to contest the 2030 presidential elections, which are scheduled for October of that year and when he will be 75 years old.
Bolsonaro also said that he is not “dead” and that he will talk with his lawyers about the possibility of filing appeals against the decision both before the Electoral Tribunal and before the Supreme Court.
The far-right leader is also hopeful about the possibility already anticipated by some of his political co-religionists that Congress approves a bill amnesty for those convicted of electoral crimes in 2022, which would benefit him and re-empower him politically.
The trial against the former head of state was centered on a meeting that Bolsonaro convened with fifty foreign ambassadors at the official residence of the Presidency, on July 18, 2022, to once again disqualify the transparency of the electoral system and democracy itself.
This fact, according to the sentence, constituted an “abuse of political power, prohibited conduct and information disorder” and also an “improper use of public property and the media”, since Bolsonaro ordered public television to broadcast the event.
Valdemar Costa Neto, president of the Liberal Party (PL), the formation to which Bolsonaro belongs, stated that he is incredulous at what happened because it was the first time in history that a former president “loses his political rights for speaking out.”
