From Rio de Janeiro
The unbalanced far-right Jair Bolsonaro began the week sentenced to not be able to run for any electoral position for the next eight years. In his usual style of incorrigible charlatan, he said that he is not dead and that he will be a powerful vote-getter for the right and, of course, the extreme right that blindly follows him. He also complained that he had been the victim of an injustice. That is to say: a more than expected reaction.
He announced that he will file an appeal with the highest levels of Justice in Brazil, but his chances are nil. At the moment there are concrete indications that he could be a strong vote-getter in next year’s municipal elections. But it must be remembered that fifteen complaints await him in the Superior Electoral Court and others in the highest instance, the Federal Supreme Court.
The following complaint involves two of his sons who work in politics, Senator Flavio and the national representative Eduardo. Several of his most strident allies also make up that complaint. And in others the name of his most active and unbalanced son appears, the councilor for Rio de Janeiro –Carlos Bolsonaro– who spends most of his time in Brasilia, far from his seat.
There is a coincidence between jurists and most political analysts: the mere suspension of Bolsonaro’s political-electoral rights is not enough, compared to all the crimes he committed in his destructive government.
In addition to ruining the university system, the laws to protect the arts and culture, facilitating the destruction of the environment, encouraging the invasion of indigenous reserves and encouraging the indiscriminate sale of weapons, the far-right acted criminally during the pandemic.
He criticized care measures adopted by mayors and provincial governors, rebelled against the use of masks and launched incessant unsubstantiated complaints against the damage that vaccination would cause. In short, he is responsible for more than half of the 700,000 fatalities from Covid in Brazil.
All these crimes remain unpunished thanks to the complicit inertia of the Attorney General’s Office. But judges that make up both the Superior Electoral Court and the Federal Supreme Court, have repeatedly shown that they will act. There are a series of criminal complaints brought to the Supreme Court against Bolsonaro. The perspective is that they begin to be judged from August.
If at the moment there was a consensus among the members of the Supreme Court, in the sense that imprisoning the far-right would reinforce his role as a victim of injustice, now the consensus is different: ceasing to be eligible is little punishment for him.
Bolsonaro’s coup, repeated every three days during his presidential term for four infinite years, caused him to be warned 31 times by the Supreme Court in that period. He ignored all formal warnings and carried on as usual.
The scant reaction of the “bolsonaristas” to the first sentence of their boss last week is striking. Although they are always very active on social networks, they did not make the expected noise.
Already the movements of Bolsonaro’s eventual heirs were very smooth. The convicted person refused to indicate his successor, insinuating that he is early and that he intends to reverse the sentence to be able to contest the 2026 presidential elections.
What is being said among his relatives is that, faced with the new cadre, Bolsonaro admits that he could open space for his wife Michelle, a self-appointed evangelical pastor who defends radically retrograde positions, to participate in the presidential elections, eventually as a vice-presidential candidate. That, of course, if she does not fall into the hands of Justice.