The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Brazil has voted in favor of politically disqualifying former President Jair Bolsonaro for eight years for abuse of power and fraudulent use of public resources when in July 2022 he gathered dozens of foreign ambassadors at the Planalto Palace to persuade them, without evidence, of the shortcomings of the Brazilian electoral system and electronic ballot boxes.

Four of the seven TSE magistrates have voted in favor of condemning Bolsonaro for abuse of power and improper use of the media this 2022when he summoned ambassadors to air unsubstantiated claims about Brazil’s electronic voting system.

With the favorable vote of the vice president of the TSE, Cármen Lúcia Antunes, the political future of Bolsonaro has been certified, who the day before had seen how up to two other judges supported the disqualification exposed by the investigating judge of the case, Benedito Gonçalves. “With all due respect to the eminent judge Raul AraújoI announce to your excellency and to the judges that I am accompanying the examining magistrate in the disqualification sentence for the first person investigated, Jair Messias Bolsonaro”, said Antunes, whose vote is the fourth in favor of this sanction.

Antunes refers to Araújo, the only one of the TSE judges to date who has voted against sanctioning the former president on the grounds that despite the fact that spread false information about the electoral system In that meeting with ambassadors, he considered that it did not meet “the requirement of sufficient seriousness.”

During the explanation of her vote, the magistrate pointed out that Bolsonaro disrespected the Executive and Judicial powers with that meeting, in which he clearly “consciousness to pervert”the former president “put the electoral process and democracy itself at risk.”

Likewise, Antunes considers it “proven” that Bolsonaro used that meeting not only to attack facts that had already been refuted by the TSE, but also to question the legality of the president’s candidacy Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and self-promotion electorally.

Instead, Bolsonaro defends his innocence and has already said that he plans to go to the Supreme Court. “I have not attacked the voting systemI only showed its possible failures,” the former Brazilian president asserted in an interview with the Itatiaia radio station this Friday, before the trial. “This trial makes no sense,” he concluded.

The next to vote are the president of the Court, Alexandre de Moraes, and de Kassio Nunes Marques. Although your vote will be merely symbolicit is expected that the former will also vote in favor of the disqualification.

In addition to this case, by all accounts the most serious, Bolsonaro has fifteen other processes pending in the TSE. With this disablement, You will not be able to present any political candidacy until 2030.