Down and Out in Brazil: Former Brazilian Leader Goes On Trial For Attempted Coup

Former Brazilian Infrastructure Minister Tarcísio de Freitas recently testified on behalf of his one-time boss, Jair Bolsonaro, the ex-president of Brazil, who is currently on trial for allegedly organizing an attempted coup to remain in office and plotting to murder the current president and a supreme court justice. 

“During the period I was with the president during the final stretch (of his term)…he never touched on that subject, never mentioned any attempt at constitutional disruption,” said Freitas, who is the current governor of the state of São Paulo. 

A conservative and populist, Bolsonaro faces 40 years in prison if he’s found guilty of seeking to seize control of the government after he lost his reelection bid to current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, a leftist, in late 2022, reported Agence France-Presse. He would also be banned permanently from holding office. 

Soon after the election, his supporters stormed the Brazilian Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace in the capital of Brasília, the Buenos Aires Herald explained. 

Bolsonaro claims the prosecution is politically motivated and aims to prevent him from running for office again in 2026, the BBC noted. The case against him, meanwhile, appears strong, analysts add, pointing to a mountain of evidence, including testimony by some of his own supporters. 

In mid-May, Gen. Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, a former army commander under Bolsonaro, took the stand in a pre-trial hearing and told the court that he met with Bolsonaro ahead of the inauguration of Lula in early 2023 to discuss a “state of siege” as a possible way to overturn Bolsonaro’s election defeat, according to Agence France-Presse. 

Another military official under Bolsonaro, Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, told the court he also took part in meetings in which Bolsonaro discussed “the hypothetical possibility of using legal instruments” to overturn the election results and justify military intervention. 

Both Gomes and Júnior said they refused to comply. Gomes said that he warned Bolsonaro of the judicial implications of declaring a state of siege and even threatened to have him arrested if he followed through with the plan. 

More than 80 witnesses, including senior military officers, former government ministers, and officials from the police and intelligence services, are testifying in this preliminary trial phase. Among them is Bolsonaro’s former personal assistant, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, who has made a plea deal.  

Still, British-Canadian writer Gwynne Dyer saw holes in the prosecution’s case. Writing in the Bangkok Post, he argued that the civilians who vandalized government buildings were incompetent and half-hearted in their attempt at regime change. Soldiers never left their barracks. And Bolsonaro was “on vacation” in Florida. 

Meanwhile, it’s not clear a judge would imprison the former president if he is found guilty. Bolsonaro, 70, is recovering from his sixth operation for intestinal damage related to a 2018 assassination attempt. Pain and discomfort have impeded his campaign efforts for his party in next year’s presidential election, the Associated Press wrote. 

Bolsonaro’s downfall represents an especially remarkable reversal of fortunes in contrast to the comeback of his arch-nemesis, Lula. 

Lula left office in 2010 after serving two terms as a popular president. His handpicked successor, former President Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and ousted in 2016. Then, a year later, prosecutors convicted Lula in a bribery and corruption scandal, imprisoning him for almost two years. In 2021, the country’s Supreme Court annulled his conviction, letting him run for office again. 

Holding on to power is a long game in Brazilian politics, analysts say. Bolsonaro is already banned from holding office until 2030 for abuse of power and for making unfounded claims that Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud. Despite the ban, he said he plans to run again in the 2026 presidential election. 

After all, Lula became president again in spite of his conviction, observers add.  

“One of the strange paradoxes in politics is that populists gain from anger at the political system no matter how much they contributed to the system’s failures,” wrote World Politics Review. “Brazil’s prosecution (of) Bolsonaro for the attempted coup he plotted is salutary. But that does not guarantee the country won’t fall into this same trap.”