Brasilia, (EFE).- Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who will face a trial before the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) starting this Thursday, affirmed that this process will give a “message” of what a democracy is.
“My trial is a great message for the TSE to demonstrate what a democracy is,” Bolsonaro declared in an interview with CNN Brazil, one day after the trial for his alleged abuses of power and that if unfavorable, he can withdraw all his political rights. The indictment, including General Walter Braga Netto, who was Bolsonaro’s running mate for vice president last year, alleges that the far-right leader violated electoral law on numerous occasions.
The Democratic Labor Party (PDT, for its acronym in Portuguese) promoted the process and is focused on the harsh disqualification campaign that Bolsonaro maintained against the electoral Justice during the two years prior to the elections last October.
A central point of the accusation is a meeting that Bolsonaro called at the official residence of the Presidency with fifty foreign ambassadors on July 18, 2022 to insist on his campaign to discredit the electoral system.
“Foreign policy is the exclusive responsibility of the President of the Republic” and the meeting was held at the private residence without “talking about fraud” and before the electoral campaign began, Bolsonaro justified.
In that meeting, broadcast on public television by express order of the Presidency, the then ruler tried to convince diplomats of the alleged fraud that would allow the electronic ballot boxes that have been used in elections in Brazil since 1996.
Explanation of the meeting
Without verification of irregularities in almost three decades since its implementation, Bolsonaro said this Wednesday that at the meeting he addressed an investigation by the Federal Police into the 2018 elections, which he won, and that “it has not yet been concluded.”
“We are talking about the printed vote,” a project that Bolsonaro led without success since 2012, when he was a deputy, and “a meeting with ambassadors to withdraw someone’s political rights is not justified,” said the former president.
During the interview, Bolsonaro alluded several times to the electoral trial in 2017 of his predecessors Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) and Michel Temer (2016-2018) and that the TSE decided to archive after rejecting accusations other than the initial one.
In 2017, with Rousseff already dismissed and Temer in the Executive, a close decision of four votes to three, the TSE deemed the accusation of abuse of power inadmissible and maintained the political rights of the accused.
“I want the same criteria of 2017 to be repeated and that other accusations not be attached,” like the several that weigh on him in other processes, with a “fair trial” so that an “injustice” is not committed, he said.
The former president stated that he does not contemplate the “possibility” of losing his rights and considered that he currently represents the “center-right”, but that in an unfavorable scenario for the 2026 elections, the new leaders “will emerge”.
“I want to continue contributing to public life and I don’t want to stay locked up at home,” said Bolsonaro, who said that in the event of a defeat “everything has its defense” and he will go “until the last instance because that is the rule of the game.”
In this sense, the former president recalled that in his almost 30 years as a deputy he faced 20 similar processes and that this time “it will not be different.”