Another Democracy Goes Authoritarian: Brazil. By Augusto Zimmermann.
Thousands of Brazilians have occupied this Sunday their country’s Congress to protest against the election and inauguration of far-left presidential candidate Lula da Silva. Thousands of others have gathered outside the presidential palace and the Supreme Court. They are calling for the immediate cancellation of the election.
Lula was sworn as the new President of Brazil on January 1. He had been the nation’s elected President from 2002-10. Lula, who has served prison time for his involvement in corruption, apparently won 50.90 per cent of the vote and the conservative candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, received 49.10 per cent. …
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Millions of Brazilians have been protesting Lula’s alleged victory since October 30. The spontaneous mass movement has spread around the nation and has no defined national leaders. Many demonstrators are elderly, with a significant presence of young people and families. Above all, these protesters in Brazil are motivated by a strong belief that the presidential election suffered from massive electoral fraud.
On November 9, 2022, the nation’s Defence Ministry sent to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) its long-awaited report on the electoral process. Produced by the technical team of the Brazilian Armed Forces, the report did not reject the possibility of electoral fraud. …
According to the Ministry of Defence, ‘It is not possible to ensure that the computer programs that have been implemented at electronic voting machines are free from malicious insertions that alter their functioning.’ …
As a result, the Ministry of Defence requested the Superior Electoral Tribunal ‘to conduct an urgent technical investigation into what happened in the compilation of the source code and a thorough analysis of the codes that were executed in electronic voting machines’. …
Unfortunately, the request from the Ministry of Defence was completely ignored by Justice Moraes. Furthermore, the Superior Electoral Court rejected any voter fraud claims from Bolsonaro’s political party (Liberal Party) in November. The Court justice who made the ruling, Alexandre de Moraes, described the legal filing as ‘bad faith’ litigation and fined the plaintiffs $4.3 million for simply daring to ask the court’s opinion about the election results! …
Of course, these judicial rulings are entirely arbitrary and unconstitutional. Supreme Court justices are expected to uphold the law and Brazilians have a very clear constitutional right to protest politically. …
Apparently, however, nobody in Brazil has been allowed to question the transparency of the recent presidential election. Whoever dares to do so ‘will be treated like criminals’, admonishes Justice Moraes. On December 14, he warned that ‘many people still need to be arrested and a lot of fines to be issued’. …
This is how brutal dictatorships start. At this moment hundreds of judicial arrests are taking place across Brazil. The unelected judiciary has now moved on to a new phase of political activism, and the federal police keep carrying out the arrest of people on solely ideological grounds. …
Conclusion:
The latest events in Brasília are a result of a spontaneous reaction against an electoral process that millions of Brazilians perceive as being completely lacking in transparency and credibility. Amid allegations of massive electoral fraud, these concerned citizens have been protesting in their millions over hundreds of cities nationwide. The problem is that millions of Brazilians do not trust the Electoral Court and believe that such court is part of the electoral fraud scheme in this presidential election.
