Does the Bolsonaro indictment show a legal double standard in Brazil?

The “Trump of the Tropics,” former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, was indicted Tuesday for falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination status for his Florida vacation. The indictment is the first faced by the conservative leader, who has already been barred from running for office. More are headed his way, in what he is describing as a lawfare effort spearheaded by President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva.

The indictment was signed by Detective Fábio Alvarez Shor, who says in his report that the former president and his aides “issue[d] their respective [vaccination] certificates and use[d] them to cheat current health restrictions.” Brazil’s supreme court has already seized Bolsonaro’s passport — and he could spend between two and twelve years behind bars if convicted, according to legal analyst Zilan Costa — albeit little precedent exists to determine what penalties may entail.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s son who serves in the country’s chamber of deputies, told The Spectator last month how he considered the charges against his father to be ludicrous and hypocritical. The Brazilian government was even trying to get Jair Bolsonaro for “getting too close to a whale” while riding a jet ski. The president and his allies have understandably used this particular case to ridicule the close to 600 cases Bolsonaro has accumulated.

These cases include one relating to the January 8, 2023 uprising in the capital, one alleging that he sneaked two sets of Saudi-gifted diamond jewelry into Brazil, preventing them from being incorporated into the country’s public collection, and another promoting the use of chloroquine as a Covid-19 medicine in public addresses, as well as misusing state funds to acquire the medicine while being slow in attaining vaccinations. The most “traditional” of the accusations involves practicing rachadinha while he was a federal deputy, a scheme used by Brazilian politicians in which a cut of the pay for close associates, acting as public employees, is sent back to the politicians.

Eduardo Bolsonaro sees malicious intent and blatant double standards at play. “[Lula’s] Brazil has sustained a scheme of corruption in Cuba and Venezuela, financing public works, like the Port of Mariel in Cuba and Caracas’s metro, with Brazilian public funds, which were almost certainly not supervised,” Bolsonaro claimed to The Spectator at a Center for a Secure Free Society event.

What Bolsonaro described was evidenced in the infamous Odebrecht scandal, which began in 2008. Approximately $349 million in bribes to foreign officials and politcal parties were uncovered then, with Lula’s government implicated in financing the campaigns of his regional allies.

Lula has already spent 580 days in jail, following a conviction in charges of money laundering and corruption in 2017. He was exonerated in 2021, but the leftist leader remains far from a squeaky clean figure. A closer look into his troubles with the law reveal how statute of limitations law and a friendly supreme court helped him run for office again after his release.

Brazil’s judicial functions are characterized by its instância process, in which there are four levels, starting with the lower courts and making it all the way to the supreme federal court. The country’s highest court, where a majority of its ministers were appointed by Lula’s Workers’ Party, has clashed with Bolsonaro for most of his career. Their constitutional interpretations led to dismissing Lula’s charges, based on the fact that he was arrested after conviction at the second level.

If the charges against Bolsonaro succeed, the sums involved still look like petty crime when contrasted with the scandal Lula was mixed up in. The jewelry gifted by Mohammed bin Salman is worth close to $70,000 and the rachadinha case’s alleged transactions are worth $230,000. On the other hand, Lula and Rousseff were embroiled in one of the biggest corporate corruption scandals in history, involving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes — with almost 100 of them being paid to law-loving Venezuelan officials, as well as to Lula and his party.

Last month, tens of thousands of Brazilians poured into the iconic Paulista Avenue of Jair Bolsonaro’s home state of São Paulo to protest what they consider to be political persecution. With more indictments expected, tensions may escalate further. For his part, the former president appears ready to flex his political muscle.