Sao Paulo (EFE).- Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro affirmed this Friday that, if he is disqualified for eight years for abuse of political power in the 2022 elections, he will appeal to the Supreme Court to try to recover his political rights.
“I will talk to my lawyers and there will be an appeal before the Federal Supreme Court,” said the former president in an interview with the Itatiaia radio station, hours before the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) resumes the trial that will define his political future.
Of the seven magistrates that make up the plenary of that court, three have already voted in favor of condemning the far-right leader, whom they accuse of using his then position as head of state to “degrade the electoral environment” with “false information.” and “egregious lies” and create a state of “collective paranoia”.
One more vote against him would make up a majority in court to disqualify the retired Army captain until 2030, preventing him from contesting the elections held until that date.
So far only one magistrate has defended the acquittal of the former ruler.
Decisive day for Bolsonaro
This Friday a fourth hearing will be held with the vote of the last three plenary judges: Cármen Lúcia Antunes, Kassio Nunes Marques and Alexandre de Moraes, who is an instructor in the Supreme Court for other cases where Bolsonaro is listed as being investigated.
The central point of the trial in the TSE is a meeting to which Bolsonaro summoned fifty foreign ambassadors at the official residence of the Presidency, on July 18, 2022, to seriously disqualify the electoral system and accuse the Justice of maneuvering in favor of today’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
That meeting, in which Bolsonaro raised unfounded suspicions about the electronic ballot boxes that Brazil has used without complaints of fraud since 1996, was broadcast on public television and social networks.
Bolsonaro would end up losing the October elections of that year by a narrow margin to Lula, who took office on January 1, and to this day he still does not admit defeat.
The former president denies the accusations.
The former president insisted today that the trial “has neither head nor tail” and again insinuated that the TSE magistrates acted to favor the progressive leader in the last electoral contest.
“I did not attack the electoral system, I showed possible failures,” he clarified.
Likewise, he defended that they cannot be prosecuted for “false news” because it is a concept that is not established in the law and invoked the right to freedom of expression, a thesis that, according to the TSE magistrates who voted against him, was not adjusts to the case being judged.