Electoral courts could give Jair Bolsonaro his comeuppance

“The forecast is not good,” former President Jair Bolsonaro admitted last Saturday, talking about his upcoming trial at Brazil’s top electoral court, which kicks off on Thursday. Despite insisting that there is no reason for him to be convicted by the electoral authorities, which would render him ineligible for office, Mr. Bolsonaro appears profoundly resigned to defeat.

He faces accusations of abuse of political power and undue use of official communication channels. The case was motivated by a request from the center-left Democratic Labor Party (PDT) following a meeting last year in which Mr. Bolsonaro, while still head of state, hosted foreign ambassadors to disparage Brazil’s electoral system.

Mr. Bolsonaro was in a unique position to invite foreign diplomats to his residence, one not enjoyed by rival candidates. He abused his powers, the PDT adds, to propagate his campaign platform — which included attacks on electoral integrity itself. Furthermore, this campaign act was shown live by a public broadcaster.

As The Brazilian Report said at the time, the meeting was less about convincing diplomats that Brazil’s voting system was rigged, and more about using them to lend a veneer of legitimacy to Mr. Bolsonaro’s conspiracy theories around possible tampering with electronic voting machines.

The PDT’s complaint was presented in August 2022 with the (unsuccessful) aim of excluding Mr. Bolsonaro from the presidential race that took place two months later (which he lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by a whisker). Still, a conviction now would remove him from the political chessboard for eight years.

With Mr. Bolsonaro facing ineligibility, his closest allies have crafted a multi-pronged plan to keep him relevant in the political arena — if not as a candidate, at least as a kingmaker. In 2022, his support proved decisive for throngs of conservatives who were elected in congressional and gubernatorial races.

Interestingly, this plan bears many similarities with Lula’s strategy to remain the sun around which the left revolves, even as he faced multiple corruption accusations and convictions.

Part of the strategy lies in discrediting the trial as a sham. Just like Lula called the cases brought against him a witch hunt, Mr. Bolsonaro has portrayed his upcoming trial as a political hit job. Lula was later vindicated — his corruption convictions were quashed by the Supreme Court, which found that the case against him was tried in the wrong jurisdiction and by a biased judge.

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