Brazilian electoral justice excluded the armed forces from observing elections

The Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), the highest electoral body in Brazil, excluded the Armed Forces from the Transparency Commission, which is responsible for monitoring the electoral process in Brazil and guaranteeing the reliability of the electronic voting machines used in voting. The decision was made Tuesday evening unanimously by the court’s seven judges.

The armed forces were included in the election monitoring body at the end of 2021 by then-TSE president Judge Luis Roberto Barroso, amid sharp attacks by then-President Jair Bolsonaro on the court and consistent public doubts by the government about the reliability of electronic means. voting machines used in elections in Brazil since the 1990s. Believing that this gesture would calm morals, Barroso invited the Armed Forces to take a place on the commission overseeing electoral actions, and soon realized that he had made one of the biggest mistakes of your life.

Under pressure from Jair Bolsonaro, the military personnel chosen by the Ministry of Defense to represent the Armed Forces began to want to interfere in everything, they made public statements repeating doubts about the fairness of the Brazilian electoral process, defended by Bolsonaro, and greatly disrupted the entire process until the October presidential elections. Due to such an aggressive and threatening position of the Armed Forces, until the last day they feared that the military would carry out a coup if Bolsonaro did not win, and the Brazilians went to the polls twice, in the first and second rounds. in an atmosphere of great tension.

Bolsonaro was defeated by Lula da Silva, his allies blocked roads and gathered around barracks calling for a military coup to stop Lula from taking office and keeping Bolsonaro in power, but the feared coup did not happen. Only a few days ago it became known that this coup, organized in November and December by Jair Bolsonaro and his radical supporters, including high-ranking military officers, did not happen only because the then army commander, General Freire Gomes, refused to participate.

Now, on the proposal of Judge Alexandre de Moraes, President of the TSE, the court excluded the Armed Forces from the composition of the commission, since, according to him, in defending this exclusion, it had been clearly proven that the presence of the military in the electoral process, in addition to the fact that it was not provided for in its constitutional functions, it turned out to be neither positive, nor necessary, much less effective. This Wednesday, the new Army Chief, General Thomas Paiva, praised the measure taken by the TSE and added that the withdrawal of the Armed Forces from the electoral process represents a return to normalcy.