The electoral court of Brazil rejects Bolsonaro's appeal against his defeat and imposes a million-dollar fine on his party

A Bolsonaro supporter gestures against censorship during a coup demonstration on November 15 in front of the Army headquarters in Brasilia.SERGIO LIMA (AFP)

The highest electoral authority in Brazil wanted to send a strong message to President Jair Bolsonaro this Wednesday night for relying on unfounded theories to challenge his defeat at the polls against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva through the courts.

The appeal in which the far-right leader requested the annulment of part of the votes was rejected in a judicial decision that includes arguments with harsh reproaches and a fine of 22 million reais (about four million dollars and euros) for "litigating for bad faith” to the party with which he attended the elections.

Bolsonaro lost the elections by 1.8 points (two million votes) after a campaign in which he has not stopped stirring up the specter of fraud.

The president of the Superior Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, maintains that Bolsonaro's Liberal Party acted in bad faith because it filed a lawsuit "ostensibly offensive to the democratic rule of law (...) with the purpose of encouraging criminal and anti-democratic movements that, even with Serious threats and violence have been blocking highways and streets throughout Brazil”.

The judge is referring to the roadblocks and the coup rallies in front of the barracks with which the most radical Bolsonaro groups protest the result of an election that they consider that the system and powerful hidden forces have robbed the far-right leader.

Brazil has used an electronic voting system for a quarter of a century that is subject to public scrutiny, and even

attacks , and has never been affected by fraud.

Bolsonaro and his people wanted the votes typed in the electronic ballot boxes manufactured before 2020 to be annulled due to "signs of serious errors."

The fine imposed on Valdemar Costa Neto, who chairs Bolsonaro's party and signed the lawsuit with him, is one of the highest in similar cases on record.

And it implies that public funds for the party are frozen until he pays.

The economic sanction is considered part of an institutional deterrence effort to prevent questioning the electoral results without solid evidence from becoming part of the political strategy in the future.

Bolsonaro challenged the results of the second round, which he lost, but not those of the first, when his party gained enormous power in Congress and in the States.

In Brazil, nobody gave a penny because Bolsonaro's appeal before the Superior Electoral Tribunal, presented on Tuesday, would prosper.

Legal experts and political analysts coincided in predicting from minute one that the arguments were not sustained and that the ultimate goal of partially challenging the result was to provide new arguments of alleged fraud to energize the dwindling Bolsonaro protests.

Camps of radicals still persist in various cities to ask the military to block the path to power for the leftist Lula.

He is resting in São Paulo to recover from a surgical operation to remove a nodule in his throat.

The electoral tribunal and its president have been, together with the duo Lula-Bolsonaro, the great protagonists of the most polarized elections in Brazil.

The continuous questioning by the current president and his allies of the voting system and the enormous volume of misinformation that has circulated through social networks have led Judge Moraes to launch an intense offensive to defend the integrity of electronic ballot boxes and combat the news. false.

In this effort, he has not hesitated to close the social networks of influential Bolsonaro politicians to prevent them from continuing to spread conspiracy theories about the electoral results.

Some specialists maintain, in any case, that certain decisions of the judge are excessive and border on censorship.

The transfer of power must culminate on January 1, the date scheduled for the ceremony in which Lula takes office and begins his third term.

Brazil is experiencing a kind of schizophrenic situation since the electorate gave a narrow victory to a broad alliance led by the former president in defense of democracy.

On the one hand, there is a cloistered and almost mute Bolsonaro who litigates in court while his most ultra-followers desperately try to reverse a result recognized by all the rest of the Brazilian institutions and the international community.

And, on the other hand, the daily meetings that Lula's transition team holds in the capital with representatives of the Bolsonaro government ministries.

This Thursday the polarized Brazil has the opportunity to close wounds, even if it is for 90 minutes.

Starting at four in the afternoon, the entire country will literally stop to watch the debut of the soccer team in the World Cup on TV, on their mobile phones, or whatever.

It faces Serbia.

Brazil is one of the favorites of the championship.

A victory would mean breaking their own record and winning the sixth cup.

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