On Friday, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro called on the Senate to impeach Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, demonstrating the leader’s continued struggle with the judiciary. Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco must now determine whether there are sufficient grounds to launch an impeachment investigation into Moraes.
On August 14, Bolsonaro tweeted, “For a long time, the justices Alexandre de Moraes and Luís Roberto Barroso (another Supreme Court Judge) have gone beyond constitutional limits with actions,” and said that they should be tried and impeached for violating the constitution for conducting “partisan and anti-democratic” investigations and censoring free speech.
Moraes has previously criticised Bolsonaro for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s electronic voting system. In fact, he has even ruled that Bolsonaro must be investigated for making uncorroborated claims about fraud in the voting system.
The president, however, has countered that he is facing an “internal attack” against his “right to freedom of expression, to critcise, to listen to and above all answer to the will of the people.”
Ahead of next year’s election, Bolsonaro has called for a parallel paper ballot, claiming that the electronic voting system leaves the door open for fraud. In fact, Bolsonaro has even repeatedly warned that he will not accept the results of the 2022 election if he loses unless Congress approves a change to the electronic voting system that has been in place since 1996.
However, two weeks ago, his proposal was defeated in Congress, with just 229 votes in favour, well below the 308 required. The Superior Electoral Court (TSE), alongside various experts and reports, has repeatedly said that the possibility for fraud is “not feasible.” In fact, on August 2, a group of 18 active and former Supreme Court justice said that Brazil’s electoral system is “free of fraud.” Such reports, however, have only served to embolden Bolsonaro in his criticisms of the judiciary.
Bolsonaro’s comments came just one day after Moraes ordered the imprisonment of Roberto Jefferson, a long-time ally of the president for undermining democracy through his social media posts. More recently, on Friday, federal police raided the properties of lawmaker Otoni de Paula. Furthermore, Moraes approved a request by the Attorney General to arrest the Social Christian Party lawmaker, another Bolsonaro ally. In fact, Moraes has ordered the arrest of a number of other Bolsonaro allies as well, including: Marcos Pereira, Eduardo Oliveira, Wellington Macedo de Souza, Antonio Galvan, Alexandre Raitz Petersen, Turibio Torres, Juliano da Silva Martins, and Bruno Semczeszm. The Justice claims that they threatened violence and “tried to abuse their right of speech to attack democracy and the rule of law.”
Critics of Bolsonaro say that his repeated assaults on the various branches of government are a distraction from his waning popularity.
A recent poll shows that a majority of citizens would approve of his impeachment, and his approval rating is reportedly at 24%. This is largely a result of his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has thus far resulted in close to 21 million cases and over 572,000 deaths in Brazil. In fact, a poll conducted by PoderData across 433 municipalities in Brazil’s 27 states shows that 58% of people want Bolsonaro to be impeached.
Against this backdrop, former President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva’s popularity has surged, with polls suggesting that Lula would win the election if it were held today. Lula, who was in office from 2003 to 2011, was recently cleared of all corruption charges, allowing him to run in the October 2022 election.