Brazilian economist faces charges for questioning election results

A Brazilian economist who questioned last week’s election results on social media is now facing charges due to a new proclamation that anyone who questions the election’s integrity will be “treated as a criminal”. 

Former president and ex-convict Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was announced the winner of last Sunday’s election, ousting incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. 

Lula, who spent four years in prison for corruption, beat Bolsonaro by less than two percentage points, the narrowest margin for a presidential election in the country’s modern history. Many Brazilians are contesting the legitimacy of the election, saying the electronic voting machines were used fraudulently in favor of Lula. 

Professor Marcos Cintra, an economist with four Harvard degrees who sits on the faculty of the prestigious Fundação Getúlio Vargas institution, wrote that he sees “no explanation” for the anomalies in the vote counts. 

“I checked the data from the Superior Electoral Court and I see no explanation for Jair Bolsonaro having zero votes in hundreds of polls,” he wrote on Twitter Saturday. “There are hundreds, if not thousands, of polls with equally unlikely votes.”  

“If there is suspicion in a single poll, it falls on the entire system,” he added. 

Cintra, who is not a fan of Bolsonaro, also stated that in order to preserve democratic institutions, there must be “convincing answers”. 

“Otherwise, I will be forced to recognize the validity of paper-based elections,” he declared, according to Revista Oese. “If we had paper records, without prejudice to the advantages of digitizing votes, these apparently inexplicable cases could be quickly discarded, avoiding the doubts about the integrity of the system that are growing.” 

In fact, citizens have a duty, said Cintra, to demand clarification from authorities within democratic institutions. “I ardently want to believe that there is a convincing explanation,” he said. 

Following the post, Cintra was ordered by Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Minister Alexandre de Moraes to report to law enforcement within 48 hours and was slapped with a fine of R$20,000 (US $3,878) for the sake of democracy.  

"Marcos Cintra uses social networks to attack democratic institutions, notably the TSE, as well as the democratic rule of law,” said Moraes. 

Moraes is making good on his promise that those who question the election’s integrity will be charged with a crime for the sake of democracy. 

"There is no way to contest the democratically obtained result with illicit, anti-democratic and criminal movements, which will be fought and held accountable. Democracy has won again in Brazil [...] This is democracy, this is alternation of power, this is a democratic state, and those who criminally are not accepting it will be treated as criminals and their responsibilities will be established," threatened Moraes, according to Brasil Sem Medo. 

“We are one of the four largest democracies in the world, but the only one that proclaims the results on the same day,” added de Moraes. “Three hours after the end of the election we already knew who would be the new president and vice-president of the republic, showing the efficiency, speed, and competence of the electronic ballot boxes.”