ex-president Jair Bolsonaro sentenced to eight years of ineligibility for disinformation

Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced on Friday June 30 to eight years of ineligibility for “abuse of power”a smashing offside due to the “false” information he disseminated about the electronic voting system before his defeat in the 2022 ballot. The 68-year-old ex-Brazilian president denounced a “stab in the back” after this judgment which deprives him of a presidential candidacy in 2026 and opens the battle for his succession within the right and the far right.

“We are on the way to dictatorship”he thundered, immediately announcing that he would appeal to the Supreme Court. “I’m not dead, we will continue to work (…). It’s not the end of the right in Brazil”said the far-right leader to the press during a trip to Belo Horizonte, in the southeast.

“Improper use of the means of communication”

Friday’s hearing was decisive. It made it possible to reach the majority, before a final result of five votes against two among the seven magistrates of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of Brasilia, to lead to a condemnation in the form of a thunderclap. Absent throughout the four sessions of this trial, which began last week, the former head of state (2019-2022) was sentenced for “abuse of political power and improper use of the means of communication”.

In question: his criticisms devoid of evidence against the alleged unreliability of electronic ballot boxes, a few months before the ballot won by his left rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The court had warned before the election that it “would not condone criminal extremism” neither “fraudulent information, disinformation, with the aim of misleading voters”launched the president of the TSE, Alexandre de Moraes.