The Defense Minister’s request is part of the offensive by the far-right Bolsonaro, who for months has raised suspicions – without presenting evidence – about the reliability of electronic ballot boxes and defends a parallel vote count, controlled by the Armed Forces.
Caveat
Last week, the US State Department made an unusual defense of the Brazilian electoral system and it was leaked that the head of the CIA, William Burns, took to Brasilia in July last year his government’s concern about a possible institutional crisis in the event of that Bolsonaro refuses to recognize the result of the presidential election. Bolsonaro must stop undermining public confidence in the electoral system, was the message that Burns left to high-level interlocutors in Brasilia.
The scenario feared by the Joe Biden administration in the most populous country in Latin America is that an eventual lack of knowledge of the result causes a crisis similar to the one unleashed by Donald Trump in the United States, which led to the tragic takeover on January 6 of last year. of the Capitol by a far-right mob.
According to polls, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the favorite to beat Bolsonaro in the first round on October 2 by a margin of between 5 and 13 percentage points. For the ballot on October 30, his advantage goes even further, although the outgoing president has achieved some recovery in recent months.
Concession
Faced with military pressure, the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Edson Fachin -who is also one of the eleven magistrates of the Supreme Federal Court (STF)-, authorized the disclosure of the documents containing the questions about the electoral process formulated by the military.
According to the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, the Armed Forces sent 88 questions to the TSE in the last eight months to show their distrust of alleged vulnerabilities in the electronic ballot box voting process.
It should be remembered that it has been used in Brazil since the municipal elections of 1996 without any complaints or suspicions of irregularities.
Criticism
The participation of the military in the commission created by the TSE to increase the transparency of the elections – decided by the then president of the TSE, Luis Roberto Barroso, in response to criticism from Bolsonaro – is seen today as a “mistake”, since provides additional “ammunition” to the right-wing leader’s skepticism about the workings of the electoral system, political observers say. Likewise, it grants the military a tutelary role over the functioning of the electoral system widely considered dangerous.
“The TSE, as far as we know, declared the confidentiality of the suggestions proposed by the Armed Forces to minimize the possibility of fraud. Mr Barroso recently said that the ballot box is impregnable. If they are impregnable and not subject to fraud, why hide this document from the Armed Forces and the Brazilian population?” Bolsonaro said last week.
“The Armed Forces are not going to participate as simple spectators in the electoral process. That’s not gonna happen. The Armed Forces have a cyber command with hundreds of soldiers who graduated from the best universities in Brazil and did a very successful job”, he added, expressing his idea that the military carry out a scrutiny parallel to the official one.
plans
Bolsonaro, a former Army captain, is due to announce in the coming days that his vice-presidential candidate will be retired General Walter Braga Netto, his former chief of staff and former Defense Minister.
The Bolsonaro government has appointed more than 6,000 soldiers to public positions and is the only administration since the end of the dictatorship (1964-1985) that vindicates the de facto regime and the torture exercised against political prisoners.
Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party (PT) says it trusts that the Armed Forces will not become politicized in favor of Bolsonaro or undermine democracy, but is following events with concern.
Source: Ambito
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