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Category: brazil election

  • Brazil election court throws out Bolsonaro challenge and fines party

    On Wednesday 23 November, Brazil’s top electoral authority threw out a challenge by president Jair Bolsonaro’s party against his election defeat – and fined it more than $4 million for bringing the case “in bad faith”.

    The head of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), judge Alexandre de Moraes, ruled the far-right president’s Liberal Party had presented “absolutely false” arguments in its case. He said the arguments aimed at “encouraging criminal and anti-democratic movements” by Bolsonaro supporters seeking to fight the election result.

    Lack of evidence

    The Liberal Party (PL) brought the case on Tuesday, saying an auditing firm it hired had found “irreparable operating discrepancies” in around 280,000 electronic voting machines used in the October 30 runoff election, which Bolsonaro lost to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (commonly known as Lula).

    The PL called for electoral authorities to exclude all votes cast on five models of voting machine manufactured before 2020, alleging they gave a suspiciously large advantage of nearly five percentage points to Lula. Party lawyer Marcelo Bessa said excluding those votes would change the election result, from a 1.8-percentage-point win for Lula to a 2.1-percentage-point win for Bolsonaro.

    Moraes responded with a withering rejection, accusing the PL of seeking to fuel ongoing protests by Bolsonaro supporters – who have blocked highways and rallied outside army barracks, and are calling for a military intervention to keep the incumbent in power. In a statement, Moraes said:

    There is a total lack of supporting evidence.

    He added that the case:

    is blatantly offensive to the democratic rule of law, and was brought recklessly, for the purpose of encouraging criminal and anti-democratic movements… responsible for grave threats and violence.

    He also fined the PL’s coalition 22.9m reais ($4.2m), and ordered an investigation of party leader Valdemar da Costa Neto and the head of the firm behind the audit, the Legal Vote Institute.

    Bolsonaro’s track record

    Bolsonaro’s own track record is dubious, to say the least. He oversaw the second highest coronavirus (Covid-19) death toll in the world, and followed in the footsteps of then-US president Donald Trump by claiming an anti-malaria drug could cure coronavirus. He also set about causing further destruction to the Amazon, with Human Rights Watch director Maria Laura Canienu saying:

    The government’s anti-Indigenous rights policies and statements have emboldened miners, loggers, land-grabbers, and poachers to encroach on Indigenous territories with impunity, leading to devastating consequences for Indigenous people and the environment.

    The Canary’s John McEvoy reported that:

    Bolsonaro has proposed significant cuts to education, including a total elimination of funding for sociology and philosophy departments at public universities. He has also begun something of an anti-communist witch-hunt within Brazil’s public education system; his new education minister, Abraham Weintraub, has argued that crack was introduced to Brazil as part of a communist plot.

    Belén Fernández summed up Bolsonaro’s tenure for Al-Jazeera, writing that it has been a period of:

    severe economic mismanagement, soaring inflation, rising poverty rates and a surge in membership of neo-Nazi groups in Brazil.

    It’s little wonder, then, that Bolsonaro – who has regularly alleged Brazil’s voting system is plagued by fraud, without providing evidence – was initially silent for nearly 48 hours after his defeat. He then made a terse statement saying he would respect the constitution, but has not explicitly conceded defeat or congratulated Lula, who is due to be sworn in on January 1.
    After the resounding judgement from Brazil’s foremost electoral authority, it remains to be seen how Bolsonaro will react to this latest defeat.
    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Leftists celebrate as Lula defeats Bolsonaro in Brazil’s election

    People around the world are joining Brazilians in celebration as they finally learn the outcome of the Brazilian election. There was a global sigh of relief as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, beat fascist Jair Bolsonaro by a narrow margin, securing 50.9% of the votes. He’ll begin his role in the new year. The victory came after reports of police trying to disrupt the election on the streets.

    After his victory, Lula stated:

    It wasn’t Lula against Bolsonaro, it was a campaign of democracy against barbarity.

    The incoming president has already held the top job, ruling Brazil between 2003 and 2010, before corruption allegations put him in prison for 580 days. The Supreme Court later annulled the sentences.

    Lula said:

    I went through a political resurrection, because they tried to bury me alive.

    Bolsonaro has, so far, remained silent about the result. In the run-up to the election, there were huge concerns that the president wouldn’t accept a defeat, as he attempted to cast doubt on the validity of the voting system by arguing that it was vulnerable to fraud.

    Meanwhile, pro-Bolsonaro truckers have blocked roads in eleven states to protest Lula’s victory.

    Death and destruction

    Under Bolsonaro, Brazil saw the second-highest Covid death rates in the world. Just less than 700,000 Brazilians died of the virus. As Covid gripped the world in 2020, the president was criticised for repeatedly downplaying the severity of the virus, calling for the population to get back to work. At the time, he stated:

    Some will die. I’m sorry. That’s life.

    Also under Bolsonaro, 8.4 million acres of the Amazon were destroyed between August 2019 and July 2021. The main reason for this devastation was for beef production.

    In the run-up to the election, the Canary’s Tracy Keeling reported:

    The right-wing incumbent has overseen a wholesale assault on the vital biome since his election in 2018.

    She continued:

    The scale of destruction is a result of the current president’s gutting of protections for the Amazon via rule changes and cuts.

    Cautious celebration

    People have, of course, taken to social media to express their relief at the result. One person tweeted:

    Another Twitter user commented:

    Meanwhile, others have expressed a more cautious optimism. After all, Lula faces an uphill struggle. And while he’s a far better prospect than Bolsonaro, he is far from the ideal president. Journalist Jorge Martin tweeted:

    And another user said:

    Meanwhile, Crimethinc Brazil wrote:

    The fight against the advances of the extreme right and fascism is not over. Let’s get ready for a long-term fight.

    We know that the struggle against fascism is far from over. But as the world waits for Bolsonaro to concede defeat, we can cautiously celebrate the fall of another far-right leader.

    Featured image via DW News / screenshot

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on Canary.