Former President Jair Bolsonaro suffered this Friday the biggest blow of his long political career: his disqualification for eight years for systematically attacking the foundations of Brazilian democracy with “atrocious lies”, as dictated by the electoral justice.
(Read also: Former President Jair Bolsonaro is disqualified from holding public office for eight years)
The Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) determined, by 5 votes in favor and 2 against, to condemn the leader of the Brazilian extreme right for abuse of political power in the 2022 elections, in which he unsuccessfully tried to stay in power and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wonand strip him of his political rights until 2030.
The 68-year-old retired Army captain may only run for elective office or hold positions in the public administration when he is 75 years old.
His desire to be a candidate in the 2026 presidential elections, as he stated during the trial, has vanished for the moment, as there is still an appeal to reverse the sentence.
Evangelicals, the military, defenders of weapons and extreme economic liberalism have remained united with Bolsonaro under his motto: ‘God, country, family and freedom’. A motto copied from the one used by the “green shirts”fascists who tried to emulate in the Brazil of the 1930s the doctrines of Benito Mussolini.
Bolsonaro found inspiration in his “friend” Donald Trump and ideologically connects with other conservative leaders, such as the Italian Giorgia Meloni, the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, the Chilean José Antonio Kast or the Spanish Santiago Abascal.
(Read also: “It was a stab in the back”: Jair Bolsonaro reacts to his political disqualification)
The visceral hatred of “communism”, the rejection of “gender ideology”, the lack of commitment to the environment, the denial of the covid-19 pandemic and his unfounded suspicions against the electoral system filled his mandate with controversy ( 2019-2022).
Nostalgic for the dictatorship (1964-1985), the far-right leader applauds and smiles at his followers when they cheer him on to close Parliament and the Supreme Court, demonstrations that he protects under freedom of expression.
His silence after the elections, without openly acknowledging defeat and without appeasing his followers who remained outside the barracks calling for military intervention to overthrow Lula, was followed by the anti-democratic acts of January 8.
That day, a week after Lula assumed power, thousands of radical Bolsonaros stormed and looted the headquarters of the three powers in Brasilia, while Bolsonaro was in the United States, where he traveled two days before leaving the Presidency.
Descendant of Italian migrants, Jair Messias Bolsonaro was born on March 21, 1955 into a humble family in the interior of São Paulo, a key period to understand his anti-communism.
(Also read: ‘On the other side’: the exhibition on migrants that you can see in the Espacio El Dorado)
Those were times of dictatorship and the clashes between guerrillas and the military that took place in that region would mark him forever.
That was the seed that led him to enlist in the Agulhas Negras Military School, in Rio de Janeiro. He was formed in 1977. He joined the paratrooper brigade and was promoted to captain. In 1986, with democracy already back, he wrote an explosive article in the press in which he demanded better salaries for the category, almost calling for insubordination.
Shortly after he would leave the barracks to start his political career. He was a councilor for Rio de Janeiro and for almost three decades a federal deputy. In 2018, he appeared in person and won them in the second round after a campaign marred by the knife he received from a man who slipped into the crowd. In 2022 he lost re-election to his biggest political opponent, the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Today he is disabled after stretching Brazilian democracy to the extreme.
EFE
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