Minister Benedito Gonçalves, rapporteur of the case against Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) at the Superior Electoral Court for abuse of power and misuse of the media, voted for Bolsonaro’s ineligibility for eight years, on Tuesday night (27).
He said that the former president must be held fully responsible for the meeting with foreign diplomats in which he tried to discredit the Brazilian electoral process, just over two months before last year's elections.
"The produced evidence points to the conclusion that the first person investigated was fully and personally responsible for the intellectual conception of the event that is the object of this cause", said the rapporteur, who decided not to condemn Bolsonaro's running mate, General Braga Netto.
The trial will resume on Thursday morning, with the votes of six other ministers.
The coup, step by step
In the continuation of the trial, this Tuesday (27), Gonçalves had decided to include the coup draft in the cause and criticized the lies told by the former president.
“It is not possible to turn a blind eye to the anti-democratic effects of violent speeches and lies that jeopardize the credibility of the Electoral Justice", said the rapporteur during the reading of his vote.
The rapporteur said he would read a summary of the vote, which has more than 400 pages, to "speed up" the process. If convicted in this case, Bolsonaro could become ineligible for eight years.
Gonçalves opened the session advising that he would keep in the lawsuit the coup draft found at the home of former Bolsonarist minister Anderson Torres. Bolsonaro's defense wanted the exclusion of the document - which brings a step-by-step plan for a coup d'état - but the minister said that the plenary of the Superior Electoral Court had already decided in February for its inclusion in the file and that the document would be important for the analysis of the facts during the trial.
The minister also defended the Superior Electoral Court's right to include the document by rebutting the argument of Bolsonaro supporters that the Court was going against its own jurisprudence, once it had ruled out including new evidence in the trial of Dilma Rousseff's campaign with Michel Temer in 2017.
"Admissibility does not confront, does not revoke and does not contradict our jurisprudence established in the 2014 elections", said Benedito Gonçalves.
After the rapporteur, there remain the votes of six other ministers: Raul Araújo, Floriano de Azevedo Marques, André Ramos Tavares, Cármen Lúcia, Nunes Marques and the president of the Superior Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes.
Bolsonaro's allies expect Araújo - who in the past took decisions in favor of the former president - to ask for a review of the cause (30-day period for analysis, which can be extended by another 30 days), interrupting the trial.
The expectation is that the result of the trial will revoke the former president's political rights for eight years, making him ineligible until 2031.
Edited by: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
