A few months away from the elections that will define who will head the Federal Executive Branch from 2023, the current president and candidate for reelection, Jair Bolsonaro, returned to criticize the Brazilian electoral system in a meeting convened by him with the presence of dozens. of ambassadors and held on July 18 this year. The agenda of the meeting was the electronic voting machines, but it became a meeting to question the results of the polls in the last elections and attack the independence of the other State Powers through criticisms directed against the Electoral Justice and the Federal Supreme Court ( STF).
A month and a half earlier, on May 31, the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Edson Fachin, had already met with representatives of embassies and heads of diplomatic missions to present the functioning of the elections in Brazil and reinforce the role of the Electoral justice in guaranteeing transparency and security of the results of the polls. On the occasion, Fachin even invited the international community to remain “alert against frivolous accusations” and to avoid contaminating themselves with the “virus of misinformation about the Brazilian electoral system”. A clear reference to the attitudes of President Bolsonaro and his more radical electoral base.
It was clear, therefore, that the attitude of the Chief Executive when convening the meeting with the ambassadors was to “answer” the president of the TSE and disqualify his statements. The TSE, through content produced by the court’s Secretariat of Communication and Multimedia, rebutted the criticisms and allegations made by Bolsonaro. Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco represented the federal legislature and in his speeches and posts on social media defended “that the security of electronic voting machines and the fairness of the electoral process can no longer be questioned” and that any questioning in the opposite direction are “bad for Brazil in every respect”. Other presidential candidates and political leaders have also positioned themselves in this way.
It is not the first time that the Chief Executive has attacked the country’s democratic institutions. Since assuming the presidency, Bolsonaro has launched a narrative, quickly appropriated by his most loyal voters, that there was fraud in the results of the presidential election in 2018, preventing his triumph in the first round of the same, and that electronic voting machines are not reliable.
In several other situations, the heads of the Federal Legislative (Senate and Chamber of Deputies) together with the STF tried to appease the situation, but all attempts were in vain. Constant attacks on Supreme Court ministers and the electoral system made a more fruitful institutional dialogue unfeasible. In August 2021, in one of these episodes of defamation and direct attack by Bolsonaro against the ministers of the STF – specifically the ministers Roberto Barroso and Alexandre de Moraes – and of denunciations without evidence of electoral fraud in the country, the president of the STF, Luiz Fux, he even canceled a meeting in which the heads of the three powers would be present.
Everything seemed to be heading in the other direction after Bolsonaro suffered a significant defeat in the Legislative sphere against the proposal for a constitutional amendment that sought to institute the printed vote. 218 deputies voted against the proposal, 229 voted in favor of the change defended by the president and there was one abstention. As it was an attempt at constitutional reform, at least 308 parliamentarians were needed in favor for the proposal to continue being processed in Congress. The legitimacy of the result was not enough to prevent the issue from becoming a priority for the president.
Why does Bolsonaro question the electoral system by which he was elected?
It is about the adoption of a clear strategy of disinformation, that is, that seeks to confuse the voter and provoke instability in the political game. Returning to this topic, at this point, shows great concern about a possible defeat in this year’s elections. Since his main political rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, regained his eligibility and presented himself as a pre-candidate for the presidency, Bolsonaro has not been able to return to being the favorite of Brazilian voters.
Observing the growth and consolidation of Lula as the favorite in electoral polls, including in strongholds that voted mostly for Bolsonaro in 2018, as in the case of the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo, the federal government mobilized to approve a set of economic measures. to try to reverse this situation. The main example is having obtained parliamentary support to approve in two rounds the constitutional amendment that became known as “kamikaze”, which approves a state of emergency in the country to open a breach in the electoral legislation that authorizes the president to grant social benefits in an election year ( such as the increase in Auxílio Brasil for low-income families and the creation of aid for truck drivers, among others). The implementation of benefits started on August 9 and will end in December 2022.
Since the measure was approved, new surveys have pointed to an improvement in the president’s assessment, basically in the most vulnerable social strata. However, no survey has so far shown a sufficient improvement in Bolsonaro’s voting intentions to change the current electoral scenario and reduce the high rejection of his candidacy.
What is the impact of the attacks on the electoral process this year?
On this Tuesday (16) the electoral campaign officially began in the country, when electoral advertisements are released, whether on the internet or in person, through loudspeakers, walks, motorcades or marches. From the 23rd, the campaign will also cover radio and television stations. The attacks on the electoral system hardly ceased to be the agenda of the Bolsonar candidates’ campaign. On the contrary, keeping up the attacks on electronic voting machines and reinforcing the narrative that there is a task force to “take” the current president out of power – and that this will happen through electoral fraud – is part of the strategies of an extreme candidacy. right that yearns to be able to repeat the 2018 election, marked by a lot of negative and disinformation campaign.
Throughout the entire term, Bolsonaro did not come down from the electoral platform of 2018, and now, as he officially starts another campaign, he will continue to execute his plot, which could cause more damage to democracy. If, until now, all institutional responses have not been able to stop the affronts made to Brazilian institutions, let us hope that voters will do so at the electronic voting machines this year, the same ones that, since 1996, have guaranteed Bolsonaro successive parliamentary victories and the 2018 presidential victory.
