BRASILIA (Reuters) – Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro’s political career appeared all but dead on Friday as the country’s federal electoral court looked set to conclude a trial that could leave him barred from public office for nearly a decade.
If a majority of the Brasilia court’s seven judges find he abused his power by summoning ambassadors to vent unfounded claims about Brazil’s voting system ahead of last year’s vote, Bolsonaro will be ruled ineligible to hold public office until 2030.
So far, three judges have voted to convict the far-right nationalist for abuse of political power and misuse of the media, while one has not.
Justices Carmen Lucia, Nunes Marques and Alexandre de Moraes are expected to cast their votes as the court resumes the trial at 12 p.m. local time (1500 GMT).
The leading justice in the case, Benedito Goncalves, voted earlier this week to make the former president ineligible for eight years, saying he had “used the meeting with ambassadors to spread doubts and incite conspiracy theories.”
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who narrowly lost October’s election to leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is accused of creating a nationwide movement to overturn the election result that culminated in the Jan. 8 invasion of government buildings in Brasilia by thousands of his supporters.
He denies any wrongdoing and has said he would appeal to the Supreme Court if the electoral court, or TSE, finds him guilty.
“I have not attacked the voting system; I just showed its possible flaws,” Bolsonaro said in an interview with the Itatiaia radio station on Friday. “This trial doesn’t make any sense.”
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito; Writing by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
