A panel of judges voted on Friday to render far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro ineligible to run for office for seven years after concluding that he abused his power and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system.
The decision, once voting of all judges concludes, will block Mr Bolsonaro from running until 2030, upending the 68-year-old's political future and likely erasing any chance for him to regain power.
Four of the seven judges on the nation's highest electoral court agreed that Mr Bolsonaro had abused his authority by using government communication channels to promote his campaign and sow doubts about the vote.
The case focused on a July 18, 2022, meeting in which Mr Bolsonaro used government staffers, the state television channel and the presidential palace in Brasilia to tell foreign ambassadors that the country’s electronic voting system was rigged.
Mr Bolsonaro will be able to appeal to the Supreme Court. He also faces other legal troubles, including criminal investigations.
Speaking on Thursday to reporters in Brasilia, Mr Bolsonaro was defiant.
“This is an injustice against me, my God in heaven! Show me something concrete I have done against democracy,” he said.
“Perhaps my crime was doing the right thing for four years.”
In an interview earlier this week, Mr Bolsonaro recognised that his chances of prevailing were slim. The ruling will remove him from the 2024 and 2028 municipal elections as well as the 2026 general elections.
Future criminal convictions could extend his ban by years and subject him to imprisonment.
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Former president Fernando Collor de Mello and current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were declared ineligible in the past, but Mr Bolsonaro’s case marks the first time a president has been suspended for breaches of electoral law rather than a criminal offence.
Brazilian law forbids candidates with criminal sentences from running for office.
Mr da Silva's eligibility was reinstated by Brazil’s top court following rulings that then-judge and now Senator Sergio Moro was biased when he sentenced the leftist leader to almost 10 years in prison for corruption and money laundering.
Speaking before the court's vote, politician Carlos Jordy, a staunch Bolsonaro ally, said the former president still expected “a drastic change” from the court.
However, Mr Jordy said he was already contemplating a future without Mr Bolsonaro as the standard-bearer of right-wing Brazilian politics.
“Even if they commit this injustice, which has no precedent at the electoral court, Bolsonaro remains Brazil’s biggest political figure,” Mr Jordy said in a phone interview.
Mr Bolsonaro holds a ceremonial leadership role within his Liberal Party and has travelled around Brazil criticising Mr da Silva, who won last October’s election with the narrowest margin in more than three decades.
The trial has re-energised Mr Bolsonaro’s base online, with supporters claiming he is victim of an unfair judicial system and comparing his fate to that of former US president Donald Trump, according to Marie Santini, co-ordinator of NetLab, a research group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro that monitors social media.
While Mr Bolsonaro aims to be the right's kingmaker, and his endorsement will carry significant heft, his decision to decamp to Florida for several months at the start of Mr da Silva's term weakened him, said Thomas Traumann, a political analyst.
That is reflected by the limited right-wing outrage on social media throughout the eligibility trial, and no sign of protests.
“There won't be a mass movement, because he diminished in size. The fact that he went to Florida and didn't lead the opposition caused him to diminish in size,” Mr Traumann said.
“The leader of the opposition is clearly not Bolsonaro.”
