World
Brazil’s electoral court provisionally restores Exército do Lula channel and sends final ruling to full bench
Electoral inspector Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva temporarily overturned Kassio Nunes Marques’s order blocking the WhatsApp channel linked to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign. The full panel of the TSE will make the final decision.
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court temporarily restored the WhatsApp channel Exército do Lula after electoral inspector general Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva overturned a suspension ordered earlier by court president Kassio Nunes Marques.
According to O Globo and Agência Brasil, Cueva’s ruling is preliminary and the final outcome will be decided by the full bench of the TSE. He also ordered the channel’s operators not to post false content already examined by the court and warned that the page could be suspended again if that order is violated.
The initial suspension had been granted at the request of Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign. O Globo reported that the channel, coordinated by reelected lawmaker André Janones, has more than 3 million subscribers and was created to share audio, video and guidance for supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Agência Brasil said the complaint cited alleged disinformation about Bolsa Família and pension payments.
Nunes Marques argued that the channel was reproducing material the TSE had already deemed false. Cueva, however, said he was concerned about the court presidency stepping into a case under his own supervision and noted that documents used to seek the channel’s shutdown before the presidency had not previously been filed in the judicial case itself.
O Globo said Cueva found the evidence insufficient to justify taking down the entire channel and said it pointed, at most, to specific posts. Agência Brasil added that the request sent to the court presidency was filed 41 minutes after Cueva had asked for additional information in the case.
The ruling by Nunes Marques also drew criticism inside the court, according to information cited by O Globo from TV Globo. That view holds that the decision overrode the authority of the electoral inspector’s office in an electoral judicial investigation brought by Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign.
Lula called the original suspension absurd and said his political camp would seek explanations and go to court. O Globo also reported that his campaign described the move as censorship. Flávio Bolsonaro, for his part, said the channel was being used to spread falsehoods on a mass scale, and after Cueva reversed the suspension, his campaign called that new decision shocking.
Sources
About this piece. Written by El Notero with AI assistance, from reporting published by the outlet cited above. El Notero did no original reporting on this story.
