By LEANDRO SEAWRIGHT*
Bolsonaro wants to get his hands on the concept of electronic ballot box, secret ballot, secure and recognized worldwide
Carlos Velloso, former minister of the STF, once said that the purpose of computerizing the ballot was to “remove the human hand from the counting”, by guaranteeing a secure vote. Since 1996 it has been like this: suffrage with secret ballot, but carried out electronically. If the human hand should be removed from the investigation, what will the hand of the messiah say?
But, the condition of messiah – above all and everyone – presupposes the (re)election of the enlightened in terms of Émile Leónard.
As this cannot be done in a theocratic way with a supraconstitutional voice, above the democratic regime or by an olive green intervention as during the Cold War, we want to bring the human hand closer to the investigation again under the unproven argument that there is reiterated fraud in the Brazilian electoral system. The same system that elected the Messiah, previously chosen a few times through the same electronic ballot box.
The rejection to myth, the timid revitalization of the Logos (of some scientific rationale) and recent polls have shown that the Messiah may not be re-elected. It's just that the Covid-19 Pandemic, which did not precede the economic, social and institutional disarray provided by the institutionalization of Bolsonarism, impregnated the environment with the smell of possible crimes and harsh attacks on the catalog of fundamental rights. Now, the Messiah, and also Carlos Lupi, want to enforce the printed vote by going down the throats of Brazilians.
Were it only for the conspiratorial tone of PEC 135/19 by federal deputy Bia Kicis (PSL), which characterizes the TSE as a body with “concentrated totalitarianism”, the proposal would only be refuted. It's more serious than that. For this very reason, several party leaders rejected the Bolsonarist PEC and joined forces to fight it. It is, of course, a ruse, an open subtlety: well, if the proposal does not pass the legislative houses under the terms of art. 60 of CF/88, the fraud speech will impose, in the best dreams of the conspirators, the non-recognition of the elections by the coup plotters on duty. Delegitimizing the electoral process opens the way for a coup that is difficult (but not impossible!) to substantiate.
It remains to be seen if the State was equipped enough for that, if the child-cracy there will be a turn and if the adventurers from before (fierce fighters against corruption!), want to renew their image already tarnished enough when considered the history of Republican Brazil.
Party leaders and sensible judges are concerned about the PEC's progress; at the same time, it can be recalled that the STF definitively rejected the reversal of the printed vote by declaring the unconstitutionality of art. 59-A and the sole paragraph of Law No. 9.504/1997 (wording given by Law No. 13.165/2015). In these terms, Minister Gilmar Mendes rejected the possibility of harming freedom and, above all, the secrecy of the vote; he then voted in favor of the unconstitutionality of the measure (ADI 5.889/DF, rel. Min. Gilmar Mendes, j. 15-9-2020). Talking about printed votes in a country that has never managed to eradicate vote buying is like wanting to make the criminal practice even more natural.
However, since he took office – after a strong anti-systemic appeal with the right to be baptized in the Jordan River and flashback anticommunist narrative, the Messiah Bolsonaro puts his roots in the broken soil of the young Brazilian democracy. He likes the power.
As if the car wash with strong scenes of lawfare, the narrative playpen from which resonates the rhetoric of aggression against democracy and the mobilization of the imaginary of sectors against evil specters, the Messiah now confesses his strategy: “I accept anyone who is elected next year, I hand over the presidential sash in a good way, but in clean elections”.
Messiah who is messiah, enlightened, holy, and, of course, incorruptible (?), would not accept any other result than the maintenance of the flock, having certainly his re-election which would certainly further weaken the fine line that separates democracy from barbarity: its roots, as we know, go back to Silvio Frota's ideology, military indiscipline, the break with common sense, patrimonialism and everything what is contrary to the development of the country. In this sense, democracy is in jeopardy since we haven't done our homework: transitional justice capable of breaking with the ties of dictatorship and democracy. As fake news and anticommunism are not enough, the Messiah plans his triumph or otherwise a justification for his glorious retreat. We'll see if he manages to get his hands on the concept of electronic ballot box, secret ballot, safe and recognized throughout the world.
*Leandro Seawright Professor at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD).