'Straight From Donald Trump's Playbook': Brazil's Bolsonaro Contests Validated Election Loss
Common DreamsNov 22, 2022
Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice and current leader of the electoral court, has ordered outgoing Pres. Jair Bolsonaro's Liberal Party (PL) to pay a fine of almost $4.3M for "bad faith litigation," and has suspended its public funding until the penalty is paid.
De Moraes rejected a petition filed on Tuesday by Bolsonaro and the leader of PL, formally challenging the results of this year's tight presidential run-off vote, which was won by leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to the justice, all models of electronic ballots were, "perfectly identifiable in a clear, secure, and integral way."
Bolsonaro is replicating former US Pres. Trump's undemocratic — and unsuccessful — efforts to overturn the 2020 US election, making good on his threats not to accept defeat. Bolsonaro and his party are litigating in bad faith and desperately trying to undermine Brazilian electoral institutions.
This challenge reflects widespread doubts in Brazil, as the corrupt Lula is set to return to office by a narrow margin of support over Bolsonaro. Brazilian institutions are to blame for this distrust, as they have screened questions about both the electoral process and results. It's as if they were trying to hide something while failing to make the country's electoral system auditable.
There's a 2% chance that Jair Bolsonaro will successfully stage a coup by January 2023, according to the Metaculus prediction community.