The president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, decided today (24) to ban the broadcasting of propaganda for the campaign for the reelection of President Jair Bolsonaro, which associates former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with crime, especially trafficking. drugs. The two dispute the second round of the race to the Plateau.
Moraes complied with the request of Lula’s campaign. In the advertisement, aired on Sunday (22), images of the former president visiting Complexo do Alemão, a group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro, are used, for example, to say that he “would be on the side of drug dealers”. The lawyers claimed there was prejudice against black and peripheral people, as there would be an “automatic association” with criminality.
“On crime, although the content of the propaganda does not allow establishing the effective relationship with the visit of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Complexo do Alemão, there is a clear intention to link the figure of the candidate to crime, based on an untrue fact”, wrote Moraes.
According to the president of the TSE, “the propaganda, as seen, points out that the candidate was in the ‘midst of drug dealers’, a situation that shows itself to be devoid of factual substrate, extrapolating the limits of political debate, as it constitutes content without veracity and offensive. honor and image, which cannot be tolerated by this Court, notably because it is news published during the 2nd round of the presidential election”.
The minister gave 2 hours from the notification for the advertisement to be removed completely by the Bolsonaro campaign, which will no longer be able to broadcast the piece, under penalty of a fine of R$ 100 thousand for each case of non-compliance.
In another action, Moraes denied a request by Lula’s campaign to also ban the dissemination of information that the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) financed subway works in Venezuela. For Lula’s defense, it is a distortion to say that the former president is directly responsible for the operation, but the president of the TSE understood that it was a legitimate fact to the electoral debate.
