Brazil’s elections chief cracks down on Bolsonaro allies
Brazil’s elections chief and top judge has shocked even the New York Times with his overreaching censorship of Right-leaning figures in the name of “protecting democracy".
Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Alexandre de Moraes, who also serves as a Supreme Court justice, has ordered a crackdown on anyone who questions the legitimacy of the country’s election on November 2nd, when Left-wing ex-convict Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was announced the winner over incumbent Right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula, who spent 580 days in prison for corruption, won the most votes in the country’s history, but also by the narrowest margin for a presidential election in the country’s modern history. Now many Brazilians are contesting the legitimacy of the election, citing independent analyses by the electoral authorities which found that machines that were not audited had a statistically significant difference (p=10-18) in voting outcome in favor of Lula, amounting conservatively in the 1st round to 2.4% of the votes transferred and, in the 2nd round, 3.3%.
Protests erupted across the country and are nearing their two-week mark, with hundreds of thousands of Brazilian citizens blocking roads and even surrounding army barracks as they demand military intervention in election fraud.
Soon after the protests began, Moraes, an opponent of Bolsanoro, announced that anyone who questioned the election results would be treated as a criminal in the name of democracy.
"There is no way to contest the democratically obtained result with illicit, anti-democratic and criminal movements, which will be fought and held accountable. Democracy has won again in Brazil [...] This is democracy, this is alternation of power, this is a democratic state, and those who criminally are not accepting it will be treated as criminals and their responsibilities will be established," threatened Moraes, according to Brasil Sem Medo.
Moraes made good on his word when he ordered Professor Marcos Cintra, an economist with four Harvard degrees who sits on the faculty of the prestigious Fundação Getúlio Vargas institution, to report to law enforcement last week after posting his doubts about the election results online. Moraes also slapped Professor Cintra, who is not a Bolsonaro supporter, with a R$20,000 (US$3, 798) fine.
Last week, journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that two of the country’s most popular congressional candidates, both Bolsonaro allies, have been banned from social media on Moraes’ orders.
Nikolas Ferreira, who won 1.5 million votes – the most nationwide – and Brazil’s third most popular candidate, Carla Zambelli, were both suppressed due to “disinformation”.
The New York Times reported last month that Moraes, a Bolsonaro opponent, was granted sweeping unilateral authority to order the suppression of Brazilian social media users. Tech companies must comply within two hours or face suspension of their services in Brazil.
In another article titled, “To Defend Democracy, Is Brazil’s Top Court Going Too Far?” the New York Times reported that eight businessmen were raided by authorities and had their significant assets frozen on Moraes’ orders after someone on their private WhatsApp group casually mentioned support for a coup.
“In many cases, Mr. Moraes has acted unilaterally, emboldened by new powers the court granted itself in 2019 that allow it to, in effect, act as an investigator, prosecutor and judge all at once in some cases,” wrote the Times.
Those powers were granted by Left-wing Supreme Court Justice Dias Taffoli, who used January 6th to justify the need for overreaching authority, even though he had already created those powers in 2019.
