Bolsonaro faces political ban at Brazil trial

Far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro risks losing his right to run for office for eight years, as Brazil's electoral court begins delivering its ruling Thursday on charges stemming from his unfounded allegations against the voting system.

The Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) is trying the former president on charges he abused his office and misused state media when, in July 2022, he convened foreign diplomats for a meeting in which he insisted Brazil's electronic voting machines were susceptible to large-scale fraud.

Armed with a PowerPoint presentation but no hard evidence, Bolsonaro spent nearly an hour making his case to the assembled ambassadors at the presidential palace briefing, which was broadcast live on public TV.

Prosecutors say the event violated electoral law, given that it was held in the middle of Bolsonaro's polarizing campaign for Brazil's October 2022 elections, which he narrowly lost to his leftist arch-rival, now-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Insiders say Bolsonaro will almost certainly be convicted, taking him out of the next presidential elections, in 2026.

The 68-year-old ex-army captain reiterated Wednesday that he had done nothing wrong.

"There was no criticism or attack on the electoral system" at the meeting, he told journalists.

"I simply explained how elections work in Brazil."

But he appeared to be coming to terms with his likely fate.

"We know the signs aren't good, but I'm keeping calm," he said Sunday.

"We're not going to panic over the outcome... We want to stay alive, keep contributing to the country."

Bolsonaro absent 

Bolsonaro is not expected to attend the audience, which opens at 9am (1200 GMT) in Brasilia.

He will be following it from the southern state of Porto Alegre, where he will be holding political meetings, his press office told AFP.

The TSE's seven judges are unlikely to finish reading their rulings Thursday, sources said. Further audiences have been scheduled for June 27 and 29 if necessary – and the case could be extended even longer.

Bolsonaro, who trailed Lula throughout the 2022 race, said at the meeting with diplomats that he wanted to "fix the flaws" in the electronic voting system Brazil has used since 1996 to ensure the "transparency" of the elections.

"We still have time to resolve the problem, with the help of the armed forces," he said.

The accusations surged to the forefront again on January 8, when his supporters ran riot in the presidential palace, Supreme Court and Congress a week after Lula's inauguration, insisting the elections had been fraudulent and demanding the military intervene.

Both Bolsonaro's unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud and the attack on the capital drew widespread comparisons to his political role model Donald Trump and the latter's bid to hang onto power after his loss in the 2020 US presidential election.

'Large base' 

Bolsonaro, who spent three months in the US state of Florida after his election loss, has made few public appearances since returning to Brazil in March to serve as honorary president of his Liberal Party (PL).

But he remains a powerful force in Brazilian politics, where conservative parties hold a strong majority in Congress.

Bolsonaro "has a large base that is very much influenced by him," said political scientist Marco Antonio Teixeira, of the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

Even if convicted, "he'll act behind the scenes and use his vote-winning power and influence to help other candidates," he said.

But Bolsonaro faces a raft of other legal woes, from five Supreme Court investigations that could potentially send him to jail – including over the Jan 8 attacks – to police probes into allegations of a faked Covid-19 vaccination certificate and diamond jewelry snuck into the country from Saudi Arabia.