Son of disgraced Brazilian president loses congressional seat over absences

RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) — Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, lost his seat in the lower house of Congress on Thursday after exceeding the constitutional limit for absences.

The younger Bolsonaro has been in the United States since February, lobbying for sanctions against Brazilian authorities and pardons for far-right rioters involved in the 2023 coup attempt to keep his father in power.

The House’s governing board made the decision, ending a process that had dragged on since Bolsonaro’s parliamentary leave expired in July, when he began accumulating unexcused absences.

Brazil’s Constitution boots lawmakers from their elected seat if they miss more than one-third of ordinary legislative sessions in a given year without justification. In such cases, the loss of office does not require a floor vote or review by the Ethics Council, leaving the governing board with the task of formally declaring the outcome once the objective attendance threshold is met.

Last week, House Speaker Hugo Motta notified Bolsonaro to submit a defense within five legislative sessions. Motta said Bolsonaro had already accumulated enough absences to trigger removal and that it is impossible to exercise a parliamentary mandate while remaining abroad by personal choice.

On Wednesday, after the defense deadline expired, Worker’s Party leader Lindbergh Farias petitioned the Supreme Court, arguing that the governing board had acted unlawfully by failing to immediately initiate the procedure to declare Bolsonaro’s loss of office.

For Mayra Goulart, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the decision reflects a pendulum-like dynamic in the House, which seeks to balance pressure from the left-wing government, the centrist bloc known as the Centrão and Bolsonaro-aligned lawmakers on the right.

She said the move came after Congress approved a bill that could significantly reduce the former president’s prison time.

Rodrigo Stumpf González, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, said the decision was simply damage control.

“There were no longer any arguments to hold up the process. At most, they could delay it, create a commission, run some kind of review and push it into February,” he said. “At this point, that would only further damage the Bolsonaro family’s name.”

According to González, keeping the seat could have pressured the Supreme Court to accelerate the criminal case against Bolsonaro, raising the risk of a conviction and loss of political rights ahead of next year’s elections.

Gabriela Rollemberg, a lawyer, political scientist and cofounder of Brazil’s Electoral and Political Law Academy, said Bolsonaro’s removal was a binding administrative act under the Constitution. But she noted that the decision does not by itself trigger ineligibility under Brazil’s Clean Record Law, leaving Bolsonaro eligible unless he is later convicted in a criminal case.

In November, Brazil’s high court voted to bring Bolsonaro to trial on obstruction of justice charges. Prosecutors say he sought to interfere with Brazilian judicial proceedings by advocating punitive measures by the U.S. government, including diplomatic and economic restrictions.

The criminal case remains in its early stages and is being overseen by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the main target of the international lobbying efforts attributed to Bolsonaro.

In addition to Bolsonaro, the House also declared the removal of Alexandre Ramagem, who was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 16 years in prison for participating in the attempted coup to overturn the country’s 2022 election results.

Ramagem is a fugitive in the United States.

Courthouse News reporter Marília Marasciulo is based in Brazil.