Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) plans in the coming weeks to file two new complaints before the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) against the still president, Jair Bolsonaro, in an attempt to increase the chances that he will be convicted and thus prevent his candidacy for 2026.
The idea is to increase the pressure on a Bolsonaro against whom six complaints were already filed during the campaign. On this new occasion, the PT intends to file two more complaints, one for abuse of power and the other for misuse of state media to fuel its accusations of electoral fraud.
The PT claims that Bolsonaro committed abuse of political and economic power by financing the social program Auxilio Brasil with billions of reais in the middle of the electoral campaign, in addition to misusing state media to accuse the judiciary and electronic ballot boxes.
These processes could make Bolsonaro ineligible for the next eight years and would be in charge of the general investigator of the Electoral Justice, Benedito Gonçalves, who has allied with other judges, such as Alexandre de Moraes or Ricardo Lewandowski in other cases that meant setbacks for the Brazilian president.
In the hands of Gonçalves is the decision on how to carry out the investigation, although time could play in favor of Bolsonaro, since in a year’s time this judge will be replaced by Raul Araújo, considered a Bolsonaro supporter, according to the newspaper ‘O Globo’.
Although councilmen, mayors, deputies and governors have been deprived of the right to run in elections after being sanctioned, a president or former president has never been. The closest time was when Dilma Rousseff’s candidacy was investigated for alleged abuse of power in 2014.
Despite the two upcoming complaints that the PT plans to file, the main trump card they have is one opened last month calling for an investigation into Bolsonaro’s involvement in a disinformation network woven to favor him during the election campaign.
In that case, Gonçalves ordered the withdrawal of a series of channels suspected of disseminating disinformation, as well as the prohibition to exhibit during the campaign the documentary ‘Who had Jair Bolsonaro killed’, which speculates about the attack suffered by the outgoing president in 2018 when he was a candidate.
