The decision came from judge Maria Claudia Bucchianeri, who ruled that Bolsonaro violated electoral law by telling the truth: that Lula is an ex-convict who has not been found innocent.
The Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), made up of mostly left-leaning Supreme Court judges, decided on Wednesday to suspend Bolsonaro’s propaganda protocols and give them to Lula da Silva.
These protocols are provided to all presidential candidates for the release of their campaign spots on television, radio and the Internet.
According to the TSE, the latest video released by Bolsonaro’s campaign, in which he recalls that former president Lula da Silva was not acquitted in his corruption trials, but that there was only a change of jurisdiction, violates Brazilian electoral law.
A message from the court appeared in the minutes of the Liberal Party (PL, right) on Wednesday, “This message appears to replace the program suspended for violation of election regulations.”
The decision also included canceling almost 80% of the minutes allotted to Bolsonaro in the last week before the runoff.
However, these canceled minutes were not replaced with a message from the court, but were given to Lula’s campaign, so that “the candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT, left) has the right to answer”.
Although each was allotted 225 minutes for the week of October 20-28, Lula da Silva will have 395 minutes and Bolsonaro only 55 minutes.
The decision in favor of da Silva comes at a time when Bolsonaro is tied with his opponent for the first time in most polls and, according to one poll, has even taken the lead.
BOLSONARO SHOULD BE SILENT; DA SILVA CAN TALK AS HE WANTS
Starting October 21, Bolsonaro’s 25 minutes a day will be reduced to just four, while da Silva will have 46 minutes a day.
The worst thing is that on October 28, the last day of the campaign before the ban on elections, Bolsonaro will have only 3 minutes to publish his campaign spots in the audiovisual media, while Lula will have 47 minutes da Silva.
Judge Maria Claudia Bucchianeri accepted a PT request to withdraw 184 of Bolsonaro’s campaign spots scheduled to air on television this week, in which he talked about Lula’s imprisonment for corruption.
By decision of Bucchianeri, a left-wing activist who took over as a deputy judge at the TSE this year, former president Lula’s spots will be shown, giving him the “right” to respond to opposition campaign attacks.
Meanwhile, the Electoral Court has also announced the opening of an investigation into alleged disinformation by Carlos Bolsonaro, the son of President Jair Bolsonaro, a Rio de Janeiro councilor and head of his father’s communications strategy.
Inspector General Benedito Gonçalves will lead the investigation into Carlos Bolsonaro, who is responsible for the suspension of some of Bolsonaro’s ads on YouTube and even ordered the video company to suspend monetization of the videos of four content creators who openly defend Bolsonaro. even though they don’t. violate company rules.
IMPRISONED FOR 580 DAYS
In 2017, Lula da Silva was sentenced by Judge Moro to nine years and six months in prison on charges of “passive corruption” and “money laundering”, expressed in the reserve to buy a luxury apartment in São Paulo.
In addition, Lula da Silva was sentenced to two years and 11 months in prison for remodeling a house located in São Paulo in 2010 with money from Odebrecht, accused of crimes of active and passive corruption and money laundering.
These cases caused the former president to be imprisoned in 2018.
However, he served only 580 days of his sentence after the Brazilian Supreme Court, in an unusual decision, and with Judge Edson Fachín at the helm, annulled in 2021 all sentences imposed against Lula da Silva due to “technical-formal” criteria. .
The pretext used was that the court that originally tried the former President – a court based in Curitiba (in the south of the country) – did not have jurisdiction to do so and that the trials had to start afresh in a court in Brasília.
Beyond the judicial implications, the decision of the Supreme Court opened the doors to Lula da Silva.
The Supreme Court had presided over Brazil amid the region’s most significant corporate corruption scandal in decades to rehabilitate itself politically to run again as a presidential candidate.
It was shameless and pointless at the same time.
