Bolsonaro’s conviction reveals a divided Brazil

Brazil’s former right-wing president Jair Bolsanaro has been sentenced to 27 years in jail after being found guilty by the Supreme Court in Brasilia of plotting a coup and attempting the assassination of his leftist successor, the current President Luiz “Lula” da Silva.

The five-person court panel trying the case delivered a verdict, with four judges voting guilty and one voting to acquit. The casting guilty vote was returned by a female judge, Carmen Lucia.

Donald Trump, who regards Bolsanaro as a personal friend as well as an ideological ally, has described the trial as a “witch hunt” and a “political assassination.” He has imposed 50 percent tariff charges on Brazil in response, and has threatened to increase the sanctions if Bolsanaro goes to jail. Bolsanaro’s son Eduardo has been in the US lobbying for such sanctions in protest at the “political persecution” of his father.

The trial of the controversial conservative politician stems from his narrow election defeat by “Lula” in 2022. Bolsanaro – like President Trump after his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden – cried foul and according to prosecutors worked with seven co-conspirators to persuade Brazil’s senior military officers to mount a coup and assassinate the incoming president.

Suspicions that the court is prejudiced against the ex-president were also given weight by the fact that one of the judges who condemned him was Lula’s lawyer, while another served as his justice minister

In January 2023, in a carbon copy of the invasion of the Washington Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to prevent Biden’s inauguration, thousands of Bolsanaro fans stormed federal buildings in Brasilia in a bid to persuade the army to launch a coup against “Lula.”

Both the coup and the assassination plot only failed, the prosecution argued, because Bolsanaro was unable to convince enough generals to back him and overturn democracy in Latin America’s biggest nation. Brazil has had extensive experience of a military regime as it was ruled by such a dictatorship for twenty years between 1964 and 1985 after a coup overthrew a previous left-wing president, Joao “Jango” Goulart. Many Brazilians believe that Goulart – who died in exile in Argentina in 1976 – was poisoned by agents of the military junta, although the cause of his death was officially said to be a heart attack.

Bolsanaro, a former army captain, was an outspoken supporter of the dictatorship. He won power in 2018 in a bitterly-fought election campaign during which he was stabbed in the abdomen and almost died. Since that attack, the ailing politician has suffered recurrent health problems and required repeated surgical operations. 

His supporters claim that he wouldn’t survive the lengthy prison sentence that the court is expected to impose. Credence to the ex-president’s charge that he is a victim of biased political persecution is given by the way that he has been treated during the long trial. Bolsanaro was ordered to wear an ankle tag and placed under house arrest in his Brasilia home. As a result he was not in court to hear the verdict. The restrictions were imposed after the judges accused Bolsanaro of attempting to seek asylum in Argentina.

Suspicions that the court is prejudiced against the ex-president were also given weight by the fact that one of the judges who condemned him was Lula’s lawyer, while another served as his justice minister. Lula himself was once jailed on corruption charges, though the veteran politician was subsequently cleared of them,

During Bolsanaro’s rule, the ex-president was accused of damaging the Amazon rain forest by permitting logging, and of endangering the survival of the indigenous Indians who inhabit that fragile environment. His time in office, like that of Trump in the US, split the enormous country down the middle, and the trial has been marked by pro and anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations, with his supporters demanding an amnesty and his opponents calling for justice to take its course. If Bolsonaro goes to jail, there are fears that the deeply divided country will erupt in violence.