COMMENTARY The possible breach of Jair Bolsonaro's free speech rights should concern First Amendment-faithful citizens of America — and, just as important, democratic citizens of the Americas.
I defend former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro about as often as I run marathons. (Hint: I can barely finish 5K races.) And for good reason.
Time and again, Bolsonaro’s proven himself despicable, as both a politician and a person — a racist, sexist, homophobic, COVID-denying, rainforest-destroying, democracy-trashing demagogue who dreams of returning Brazil to its military dictatorship past. I certainly sympathize with the pain he still experiences after a mentally ill man stabbed him during his 2018 presidential campaign. But even that takes us back to the problem: it's hard to imagine a man as spiteful as Bolsonaro ever demonstrating empathy like that for anyone ’s at odds with.
And yet, I find myself questioning the free-speech fairness of the eight-year ban from politics that Bolsonaro got slapped with on June 30 by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court.
READ MORE: Don't worry Brazilian Bolsonaristas — Lula's a lot like Jair (and Donald)
The tribunal ruled the far-right ex-president abused his power last year when he summoned foreign diplomats to the Planalto presidential palace in Brasília and declared, falsely, that the nation’s voting machines were ripe for fraud. Bolsonaro lost his re-election bid in October and left office in January — but he still refuses to concede his defeat.
Let me be oh-so-clear: I am in no way shape or form defending Bolsonaro’s contemptible lies about Brazil’s presidential election or its electoral system. Bolsonaro is every inch the threat to truth and democracy that his buddy and former U.S. president Donald Trump is in that respect.
And I’m well aware that Bolsonaro — like Trump in the U.S. — could still face an actual criminal indictment and eventual conviction for promoting a coup. Prosecutors are investigating whether he incited unhinged supporters to storm and ransack Brasília’s federal buildings in January in hopes of getting the pro-Bolsonaro military to overturn October’s election results. (He denies it.) Also like Trump, Bolsonaro faces possible charges for a host of other alleged crimes.
We can't let the Venezuelas think it's OK to violate the rights of democracy champions because the Brazils are doing it to disinformation charlatans.
I could understand, and agree, if any of those cases were to result in his ban from running for office in Brazil — just as U.S. law should (but won’t) bar Trump from continuing to re-seek the presidency in 2024 should a criminal jury someday find him guilty for trying to overthrow the 2020 election he lost. Or for classified document felonies. Or illegally paying off a porn star.
But I’m not 100% convinced that telling foreign ambassadors you think an election is going to be rigged merits exile from elected office. Two of the Brazilian election court’s seven members voted not to punish Bolsonaro, citing free speech rights — and yes, as a First Amendment-faithful citizen of America, that’s a concern for me.
Just as important, it concerns me as a democratic citizen of the Americas.
Corrupt pocket lint
That’s because disqualifying people from running for office has become an all-too-fashionable m.o. in Latin America for ensuring elections don’t threaten regimes in power.
The most recent example on the left: a ruling by Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship (on the same day Bolsonaro’s ban was handed down in Brazil) that leading opposition candidate María Corina Machado may not run for office for 15 years. S’s accused of “corruption,” though of course the Venezuelan regime has offered not one arepa scrap of evidence.
On the right: the just as bogus disqualifications of at least three opposition candidates in the run-up to Guatemala’s June 25 presidential election — carried out by judicial and electoral officials who are so owned by that country’s corrupt ruling establishment they could be mistaken for pocket lint.
The good news is, those Guatemalan henchmen screwed up in one case: reformist candidate Bernardo Arévalo slipped through the cracks and made it into next month’s run-off election against establishment standard-bearer Sandra Torres. But now the establishment is looking for ways to bar Arévalo from that race.
That’s how appallingly cavalier systems like Guatemala’s and Venezuela’s are about these things.
Which is why it’s so important that genuine democracies in the hemisphere, like Brazil, don’t themselves approach political banishment cavalierly.
I would of course never compare a disinformation charlatan like Bolsonaro to a democracy champion like Machado. But we should make sure we don’t let the Venezuelas of this hemisphere think it’s somehow OK to violate the rights of the Machados — because they saw the Brazils do it to the Bolsonaros.
