MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil: De Moraes hopes abstention will be smaller next Sunday

De Moraes urged Brazilians to freely cast their votes and hoped abstention will be lower than that in the first round after free transportation has been arranged

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) Chief Justice Alexandre De Moraes Thursday launched an appeal on all citizens to cast their votes during next Sunday's runoff pitting incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro against the former head of state Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva.

De Moraes thanked voters who participated in the Oct. 2 first round and encouraged everyone to return to the polls. He also conveyed his appreciation to the mayors of the 27 State capitals after all of them confirmed free public transportation was to be provided after only 12 capitals had free rides available earlier this month, which resulted in an abstention rate of 20.89%, or 32.7 million voters.

Read also: TSE gives thumbs down to Bolsonaro's electoral ad fraud allegations

“We will decrease this abstention and free public transportation will help. The more public transportation and the more voters show up, the more democracy,” De Moraes said as he closed the TSE's last plenary session before Sunday's vote.

He also encouraged male and female voters not to be intimidated by threats and urged them to report cases of electoral harassment. “We cannot allow voters to be harassed, to be coerced, to be threatened, it is even electoral harassment for employers to threaten their employees,” Moraes insisted.

According to the Labor Ministry, complaints of electoral harassment at the workplace have so far reached 1,572 cases, compared to only 61 in the first round.

“I ask all voters, just as they did in the first round, to come with tranquility, with peace, to choose their candidates, Choose with freedom,” De Moraes appealed.

The magistrate also insisted Thursday that it is not up to the Electoral Justice to check whether all radio stations nationwide comply with the electoral legislation and broadcast the mandatory insertions with each candidate's advertisement. “As we all know, it is not, never has been, and will continue not to be the TSE's responsibility to distribute television and radio media and to inspect radio stations nationwide to see if the radio stations are broadcasting the candidates' insertions. All parties of good faith know this, all candidates of good faith know this,” he argued after rejecting a petition from Bolsonaro's legal team arguing that the incumbent leader had been harmed in northern and northwestern territories where stations had not aired hundreds of his mandatory insertions.

Bolsonaro said he would appeal De Moraes' decision. “For our part, we will go to the last consequences, within the four lines of the Constitution, to enforce what our audits have found. There really is a huge imbalance in terms of insertions. This of course interferes with the amount of votes at the end of the line,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, seven international Electoral Observation Missions (EOMs) are to monitor Sunday's elections. According to the (TSE), the teams are fulfilling agendas in cities like Brasilia and Sao Paulo.

The delegations stem from the Organization of American States (OAS), the Mercosur Parliament (Parlasur), the Network of Jurisdictional and Electoral Administration Organs of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (Roaje-CPLP), the Carter Center, the Unión Interamericana de Organismos Electorales (Uniore), the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), and Transparencia Electoral. De Moraes participated Thursday in a meeting with the OAS delegation.

All participating EOMs were accredited by the TSE in a previous procedure and have already been involved in the first round. They released preliminary reports in which they did not point out any irregularities and praised the Electoral Justice for the Oct. 2 process.

(Source: Agencia Brasil)