Bolsonaro takes on Brazil’s supreme court after congressman sentenced

After a two-year wait, Brazilians are finally enjoying a semblance of carnival again this weekend. With the public health emergency caused by Covid-19 declared over, samba schools and street parties are out celebrating up and down the country seven weeks after the start of Lent, not that anyone cares about the unusual timing.

The return of carnival though will bring only brief respite from Brazil’s increasingly polarised politics. Tensions are being ratcheted up again in the capital Brasilia, a city already consumed by a presidential election in October which is set to be the most challenging since the return of democracy in the 1980s.

The latest in a long series of flashpoints between the country’s main institutions occurred just ahead of the long holiday weekend when, on Wednesday night, the supreme court sentenced one of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s most vocal supporters in congress to eight years and nine months in prison for physical threats he made against the court.

The trial and conviction of congressman Daniel Silveira stemmed from court-ordered investigations into anti-democratic protests by Bolsonaro and his supporters at the start of the pandemic which called for the closure of congress and the supreme court as well as the systematic spreading of fake news.

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Since then the president has engaged in a running war of words with the supreme court, three of whose 11 members also sit on the electoral court that will oversee October’s vote, the integrity of which Bolsonaro has persistently sought to undermine.

Anti-democratic activities

The investigation into Silveira was headed up by supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes, who has become a hate figure among the president’s supporters for his investigations into their alleged anti-democratic activities. Earlier in the week, Bolsonaro challenged the judge to arrest him while one of his former ministers, evangelical pastor Damares Alves, warned “bald demons” are working against the administration. Moraes is bald.

The conviction of a leading Bolsonarista led to a new storm of criticism against the court by the president's supporters. Along with Moraes, special vitriol was directed at judge André Mendonça, recently appointed by Bolsonaro to the court, who was declared a "traitor" for voting to convict. The president's sons expressed solidarity with Silveira, who in a speech to congress dismissed Moraes as "the little king of Brazil, the frustrated little boy who acts like he wants outside of the constitution".

But Bolsonaro then escalated the crisis on Thursday night when, in a surprise announcement, he granted a full pardon for Silveira. In this direct challenge to the authority of the country's top court, leading jurists were split on whether the decree was constitutional while Brazil's bar association said it was "preoccupied" by this latest clash between the executive and judiciary. The presidential pardon also sets up another clash with the electoral court which can still ban Silveira from competing in October's election, as he plans to run for a senate seat in Rio de Janeiro.

‘Mantle of suspicion’

Trailing in the polls to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro has waged a consistent campaign against the electoral court by insinuating its electronic voting system is vulnerable to fraud. Speaking earlier this week at a ceremony to celebrate Army Day, Bolsonaro warned: “We can never have elections in Brazil under a mantle of suspicion.” Despite providing no evidence of his claims against the electoral court, the president has sought recently to involve the military in his campaign against it, claiming the army has identified “dozens of vulnerabilities” in the voting system.

After months of relative quiet, Bolsonaro’s recent challenges to Brazil’s other institutions come as his poll numbers continue to rise following the failure of the country’s traditional centrist parties to agree on a candidate to run against him. This has left the race polarised between the president and Lula who also suffers from high levels of rejection among many voters who have still not forgiven his Workers’ Party for the economic recession and corruption scandals that marred the end of its 13 years in power, marked by the impeachment of Lula’s hand-picked successor Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

Though still ahead in the polls the Workers’ Party announced a shake-up of Lula’s team this week. The move followed criticism the campaign was too centralised in the hands of a small group of older allies. Rivals have sought to portray the 76-year-old former president who is running for the sixth time – 33 years after his first attempt – as increasingly old and out of touch.