Bolsonaro’s electoral ban: a blow to Brazil’s far-right?

On June 30, Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) voted to ban former President Jair Bolsonaro from office for eight years until 2030 for allegedly abusing his political power and exploiting the media against the country's voting system ahead of last year's presidential election.

In July 2022, less than three months before October's first round vote, Bolsonaro summoned foreign ambassadors to his official residence in a televised broadcast. The meeting landed him in trouble with the top judiciary.

The lead justice, Benedito Gonçalvez, convicted Bolsonaro for allegedly spreading "violent and false" claims against Brazil’s electoral system, impacting the credibility of the electoral process that he described as “extremely harmful to the democratic environment.”

President from 2019-2022, Bolsonaro in his defence said that he simply explained how elections work, pointing to “possible flaws.” He likened the ruling to “a stab in the back,” - insisting it is not the end of Brazil’s far-right.

“The lawyers of the former president are still evaluating whether they will appeal the decision to the Supreme Federal Court, but even if they do, the chances of reversing the verdict are practically nil, as the court has a majority of justices who have suffered repeated attacks from Bolsonaro and his allies throughout his four years in government,” Joao Feres Junior, Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio Janeiro (UERJ) tells TRT World.

If the ruling is upheld, Bolsonaro would be unable to participate in the next presidential election in 2026 but able to run again in 2030.

“There is still a long judicial road of appeals ahead - in the electoral court and then at the Supreme Court - before Bosonaro is irreversibly barred from running for any electoral post, although the verdict is already effective as of now,” Rodrigo Duque Estrada Campos, a PhD researcher at The University of York, UK tells TRT World.

Bolsonaro is also banned from municipal elections in 2024 and 2028.

Feres Junior suggests he could still support other candidates in electoral campaigns, adding no street protests defending Bolsonaro occurred, unlike other large-scale far-right mobilisations in recent years.

Bolsonaro’s ‘victimisation’ and ‘conspiracy theories’

Research by the Laboratory for Media and Public Sphere Studies (LEMEP), overseen by Feres Junior with groups of Bolsonaro supporters, found “even the most radical ones already consider his ineligibility as certain” and highlighted “a general atmosphere of resignation amongst his supporters,” while many still consider his conviction “a conspiracy by the justice institutions and the left to ruin the former president.”

As such, Campos suggests Bolsonaro could capitalise on a “victimisation discourse where the judicial verdict would confirm his hypothesis of a fraudulent electoral process” with his supporters pushing their sense of “disenfranchisement.”

“It's much more comfortable for Bolsonaro to play with conspiracy theories about the electoral process rather than having to tackle real economic and social problems under Lula's government,” argues Campos.

During the trial, the TSE presented as evidence a draft decree, described as an attempt to subvert the October 2022 election result that was found after a federal police raid in January in the residence of Anderson Torres, the former Minister of Justice.

The lawsuit brought by the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) alleges Bolsonaro sought to undermine Brazil's democracy and Lula's victory, following a polarised presidential-race that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly won in the second round run-off in October last year.

In the aftermath, Bolsonaro-supporters failed to accept the election result, participating in mass-protests, blocking roads nationwide and calling for military intervention. Bolsonaro never publicly conceded defeat, leaving for the US two days before Lula assumed the presidency. On January 8, his supporters stormed the President's Office, Congress and the Supreme Federal Court in the capital, Brasilia.

Bolsonaro’s ban a response by Brazil’s democratic institutions

Feres Junior sees Bolsonaro’s electoral ban as a response by Brazil’s democratic institutions to “the behavior of a president who made threatening them a pastime,” noting how among the branches of government, the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Federal Court was the “the preferred target of Bolsonaro and his followers.”

Campos describes the TSE ruling as a “welcoming verdict” that could signal “the strengthening of institutions against systematic attacks to democracy.”

Amid an investigation into allegations of incitement to riot by Bolsonaro to his supporters that Bolsonaro denies and calls "political persecution," Campos says observers will have to wait and see “how far the judiciary is willing to go.”

He suggests focussing solely on Bolsonaro, shifts attention away from “more politically rooted groups that have helped Bolsonaro articulate the anti-democratic agenda,” like the higher-echelons of the military.

Politically, Campos does not believe Bolsonaro’s ban necessarily translates into a win for the left, nor for Lula’s presidency, with Congress still “heavily controlled by Bolsonaro allies”.

According to Feres Junior,“despite having clear authoritarian aspirations, Bolsonaro ended up transferring much power to Congress,” outlining how part of the president’s budgetary power was transferred to the legislative branch while Bolsonaro also dismantled parts of the State concerning social policies and regulatory agencies - impacting environmental protections, food security, small-scale agriculture, public health and education.

“Lula is undertaking an effort to rebuild the governance capacity of the Brazilian state following the destruction caused by Bolsonaro's tenure, worsened by the disastrous effects of the pandemic,” explains Feres Junior.

Lula’s relations with Congress, he says have not been easy with lawmakers accustomed to the benefits distributed by Bolsonaro, although he suggests Lula is achieving some results albeit in a “highly fragmented” multi-party political system whereby Brazil’s president “has almost no chance of forming a majority in Congress”.

During Bolsonaro’s tenure as president, Feres Junior notes a paradox whereby “Bolsonaro accumulated enormous electoral power, showing himself capable of being elected president and helping to elect many deputies, senators, and governors,” but “always demonstrated very limited political capacity, including little willingness to campaign and engage in the political game of representative democracy.”

Potential far-right candidates to replace Bolsonaro

If Bolsonaro’s ban is upheld, some reports suggest his family-members could occupy his political vacuum.

His wife Michelle Bolsonaro is being touted to potentially run in 2026. After Bolsonaro’s ban, Michelle took to Instagram, insisting “our dream is more alive than ever,” while pledging allegiance to her “captain.” With around a third of Brazil’s 200 million population Evangelicals like Michelle, some political observers suggest she could harness the large-scale conservative and family-value vote, notably already being a member of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party.

Flavio Bolsonaro, is a senator but faces graft allegations that he denies from his time as Rio de Janeiro lawmaker while Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro has forged international alliances with prominent far-right figures like Trump's former National Security advisor, Steve Bannon.

Another candidate to lead Brazil’s far-right could be São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas.

Bolsonaro’s reach and influence

However, Feres Junior believes it is unlikely there will be a candidate able to galvanise Brazil’s far-right with Bolsonaro’s strength and visibility.

“As Max Weber wrote roughly a hundred years ago, charisma is something difficult to transfer. There is no politician in today's Brazil who can wear the populist mantle of stupidity, rudeness, banality, ignorance, and prejudice as well as Bolsonaro,” he argues.

Bolsonaro’s 2018 successful election victory Feres Junior says was predicated on strong anti-Workers’ Party (PT) sentiment against Lula’s party, after almost two-decades of “a relentless defamation campaign by the Brazilian mainstream media against the party and its main politicians, including Lula.” He suggests it fuelled ex-President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment and the prosecution, condemnation, and imprisonment of Lula that was later overturned.

Today, without Federal Government resources to drive disinformation on social media, he suggests Bolsonaro supporters without their leader at the helm will likely have to “rely on the organizing power of the offices of allied deputies and senators and the support of businesspeople sympathetic to the extreme right agenda.”

Even with Bolsonaro unable to run for office, Campos says his mass-movement of ‘Bolsonarismo’ still exerts wide influence across different sectors of Brazil’s society.

He adds,“the strength of Bolsonarismo is not limited to elite-level politics, and resonates strongly in civil society groups such as Evangelical churches and in the police forces.”