Charged with coup plot, Bolsonaro seeks lifeline from Brazil lawmakers

By Manuela Andreoni, Luciana Magalhaes and Maria Carolina Marcello

BRASILIA (Reuters) -After Brazil's top prosecutor charged former President Jair Bolsonaro with plotting a 2022 coup, the ex-president's political future may hinge on a legislative blitz to change how politicians are blocked from running for office.

A conviction by the Supreme Court, which is overseeing the case, could land Bolsonaro in prison and create another obstacle for his plans of running for president next year. Anti-corruption legislation that the far-right firebrand voted for in 2010 as a lawmaker bars anyone convicted by higher court from running for public office.

Bolsonaro was charged on Tuesday evening with leading a "criminal organization" aiming to overthrow Brazil's 40-year-old democracy after he lost the 2022 election to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whom they planned to poison.

Lawyers for Bolsonaro denied on Tuesday that he had supported any movement attacking Brazil's democratic institutions. He has called the case a political witch hunt conducted by biased courts and investigators.

"Every authoritarian regime, in its thirst for power, needs to create internal enemies to justify persecution, censorship and arbitrary arrests," Bolsonaro wrote on his X account on Wednesday.

Aides close to Bolsonaro acknowledge in private that he faces long odds to clear his name before the Supreme Court, so the former president is focused on rallying allies in Congress to clear his path for a political comeback.

Bolsonaro huddled with allied senators on Tuesday about plans to revise the so-called "clean record law" and other potential obstacles to his 2026 candidacy. He was expected to meet with lower house lawmakers on Wednesday.

"The clean record law today only serves one purpose, to persecute right-wing politicians," Bolsonaro said in a video posted to social media this month. "The ideal thing would be to reverse the law so no one else is persecuted, and the person who decides whether they will elect a candidate or not is you."

Marlon Reis, a former judge who first proposed that law, recalled that it was a rare piece of legislation that reached Congress because of a popular initiative, after a petition gathered over 1.6 million signatures for a bill.

"We needed a great popular mobilization, one of the biggest in history, to demand that Congress go through with the law," he said.

Few politicians have benefited more from the law than Bolsonaro himself, who pushed for its passage as part of an anti-corruption crusade that carried him from the back benches of Congress to the presidential palace.

Lula, long one of Brazil's most popular politicians, was barred from the 2018 campaign by the clean-record law, clearing Bolsonaro's path to win the presidency.

The leftist leader was convicted that same year for his alleged role in a sprawling bribery scheme involving his Workers Party. The Supreme Court later annulled his conviction.

Speaking at an event in Brasilia on Wednesday, Lula said that all Brazilians have the right to be presumed innocent.

Bolsonaro and his allies could go free, he added, "if they prove that they did not try to throw a coup, kill the president and, vice president," referring to evidence about the case released by the federal police.

CONSTITUTIONAL BARRIER

A simple legislative change may not be enough to revive Bolsonaro's political hopes if he is found guilty by the Supreme Court. Brazil's constitution bars convicts serving time from holding office.

Amending the constitution would require a 60% majority in both chambers of Congress, which could be an uphill battle, according to Rubens Glezer, a constitutional law professor at the FGV law school in Sao Paulo.

"It would have enormous political cost, because you're talking about people convicted for any crime," he said.

The case before the Supreme Court is not Bolsonaro's only problem. In 2023, Brazil's federal electoral court (TSE) barred Bolsonaro from public office until 2030 for abusing his political power in two different instances during his 2022 presidential campaign, including his attack on the legitimacy of the country's electronic voting system.

His allies are now proposing changes to laws that could, for example, reduce how long a politician can be blocked from running for office. It is not clear if those bills can gain traction in Congress, but some conservatives have been emboldened by Lula's plunging popularity.

A February poll released by Datafolha revealed only 24% of Brazilians approve of the Lula administration amid rising food prices — the lowest-ever approval across his three presidential terms.

Bolsonaro allies have also attacked the Supreme Court as biased against his right-wing movement in an effort to stoke a legislative backlash.

U.S. President Donald Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group and video-sharing platform Rumble sued Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the Bolsonaro case, over accusations of illegal censorship.

(Reporting by Manuela Andreoni, Luciana Magalhães and Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Manuela Andreoni; Editing by Brad Haynes, Franklin Paul and Nia Williams)

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