SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday vetoed a bill that could reduce the 27-year prison sentence of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro for the far-right leader’s failed 2023 coup attempt.
Lula, who had already pledged to block the proposal, announced the decision during a ceremony at the presidential palace in capital Brasilia. It came on the third anniversary of the riots led by Bolsonaro’s supporters that destroyed government buildings and helped build the case against the former president.
The Senate passed the bill in December. Brazil’s Congress could override Lula’s veto, but analysts say that could be a risky move for lawmakers ahead of next October’s general elections. The 80-year-old leftist president is currently a front-runner in a likely battle with Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, one of the former president’s sons.
“We don’t have the right of forgetting our past. That’s why we don’t accept dictatorships, civilian or military,” Lula told members of the three branches of power during the ceremony. “Jan. 8 is marked by history as the day of our democracy’s victory. It is victory against those who tried to seize power through force, ignoring popular will expressed in the polls.”
Lula narrowly won his third term against Bolsonaro, who was later ruled ineligible to run until 2030 for abuse of power during the campaign trail. In November, the former president started serving for his attempted coup conviction, extending that deadline for the 70-year-old leader until 2033. Other cases remain pending against him.
Later, Brazilian Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin said the riots were an example of how “the democratic rule of law is in crisis in the contemporary world.” He did not mention Bolsonaro or jailed military leaders involved in the plot in his speech.
“It is necessary to resist, always within democratic boundaries, and our pathway must be our institutions. Brazil has given a great example of resilience,” Fachin said at a ceremony in the court.
The country’s top court says it opened more than 1,700 lawsuits against participants of the riots, including leaders and protesters.
Lower House Speaker Hugo Motta and the president of Brazil’s Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, did not attend the ceremony. Sen. Esperidião Amin, a Bolsonaro supporter, said hours after the ceremony at the presidential palace he will seek an amnesty bill for those involved in the coup attempt, a move that Brazilian Supreme Court justices have already said would be unconstitutional.
Bolsonaro supporters also destroyed part of Congress during the 2023 riots, often compared to the storming of Capitol Hill by voters of U.S. President Donald Trump one year earlier.
If Lula had not vetoed the bill, the count of attempting a coup d’etat would be absorbed into another charge, which would then reduce Bolsonaro’s prison sentence. Other convicts linked to the coup trial could have their jail time reduced by two-thirds.
Bolsonaro’s lawyers have urged authorities to put him on house arrest due to his poor health. He has been in and out of hospitals since he was stabbed by a man found to be mentally ill during the 2018 election campaign.
Neither the former president nor his lawyers have made comments about Lula’s decision.
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