ORnor had he criticized it so much, this Brazilian democracy. Corrupt, violent, unstable, crooked, capable of bringing out dangerous and eccentric figures such as Jair Bolsonaro, who remained in power until 1um January. In recent years it is an understatement to say that the Latin American giant had disappointed and worried, classified by many as a vulgar banana republic.
But on June 30, the situation changed. Jair Bolsonaro finally sentenced to eight years of ineligibility for ‘abuse of power’ and “misuse of the media” after his attacks against Brazilian democracy and its electronic ballot box system. At 68, the former president, head of one of the most powerful far-right movements on the planet, is therefore deprived of the ballot until 2030. A real political death sentence.
For the captain, the legal troubles are just beginning. Jair Bolsonaro is prosecuted in several dozen cases (up to 600, according to his own party, the Liberal Party). Environmental crimes, inaction in the face of Covid-19, forging vaccination certificates, corruption, nepotism, preparing for a coup d’état… The far-right ex-president has every chance of ending his political career behind bars .
Is this the end of impunity in Brazil, a country that has seen generations of criminal leaders escape conviction? It is however the wish of the judges, and in particular of the most important of them: Alexandre de Moraes, member of the Supreme Federal Court and current head of the electoral justice. Privileged target of the far right, he was the thinking head of Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction.
Heavy artillery against the Bolsonarists
But this ineligibility is far from the only initiative taken to counter the far right. Investigations, searches, censorship of invoices, very heavy fines, blocking of hundreds of social network accounts, dismissal of public officials, prison sentences… For four years, Brazilian justice has been using heavy artillery against the Bolsonarists. The most spectacular operation remains the express arrest of more than 2,000 alleged insurgents, suspected of having looted the institutions of Brasilia, last January 8th.
Some then cried out against the abuse of power, authoritarianism or even a “dictatorship of judges”. So it was within the American media, with various figures of the libertarian movement, defenders of unlimited freedom of expression. Among them are Twitter boss Elon Musk and journalist Glenn Greenwald. The latter went so far as to accuse Alexandre de Moraes of establishing a royal “censorship regime”. To read it, his action would represent an even more serious threat to democracy than Bolsonaro’s.
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