MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro not allowed to use Independence Day celebrations for political gain

Bolsonaro was accused of using a tool “inaccessible to any of the other competitors”

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) Justice Benedito Goncalves partially granted a petition from former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva requesting incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro be banned from using images of the September 7 celebrations for his own political campaign ahead of next month's elections.

Hundreds of thousands gathered at squares nationwide during the celebrations of the Bicentennial of Brazil's independence from Portugal and Bolsonarists insist they were showing their support for the current head of state, which would not match what all pollsters say: that Lula is way ahead when a rally of the leftwing coalition lately failed to lure over a few thousand PT voters.

Bolsonaro's son Eduardo has also posted on social media contrasting pictures of the various celebrations with Lula's alleged latest event saying all polling agencies must be missing something or they “know something we don't.”

Goncalves banned Bolsonaro from using television footage of official government events for electoral purposes. Hence, the Liberal Party (PL, right) candidate will not be able to include in his campaign spots the parts of the demonstrations in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro.

Lula and his Brazil of Hope Coalition administrators argued that ”the civic-military parade in the esplanade of the ministries in Brasília had cost over three million reais (around € 580,000) of public resources “to promote Bolsonaro's image and candidacy.” Bolsonaro was accused of using a tool “inaccessible to any of the other competitors, to project the candidate's image and make people believe that the presence of thousands of people on the Esplanade of the Ministries, for the purpose of commemorating the civic date, would be the result of electoral mobilization in support of the candidate for reelection.”

The magistrate's ruling also banned the state-run TV Brasil from broadcasting in its bulletins Bolsonaro's strongly electoral passages in his Independence Bicentennial speech.