Misleading: It is not true that the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) rejected the registration of PT Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic in 2022. Post on TikTok deceived by sharing, without context, a video in which TV Globo journalist Renata Lo Prete reported that the majority of the court had voted to exclude the PT candidate from the elections. The news published is true, but it is not from 2022 — it is from 2018, when in fact the Electoral Justice prevented the former president from running for the Plateau. After contacting Comprova, the author of the publication deleted the content from TikTok.
Investigated Content: Post on TikTok shows a video in which journalist Renata Lo Prete, from TV Globo, communicates that the TSE formed a majority to reject a candidacy of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the PT, for the presidency. Next to the video, the post shows the following caption: “news that everyone is looking forward to (sic)”. The publication does not show the date of the video broadcast by Globo.
where it was published: TikTok.
Completion of Proof: The TSE did not reject Lula’s candidacy record for the presidency in 2022, as a post on TikTok suggests. The post was misleading when it shared a video in which journalist Renata Lo Prete, from TV Globo, reported that the majority of the court had voted to exclude PT from the elections. The news broadcast by the station is true, but it is not from 2022, but from 2018.
O original video de Lo Prete is available on Globoplay, Grupo Globo’s digital streaming platform. The news is dated August 31, 2018. As reported by Lo Prete, on that day most TSE ministers rejected the registration Lula’s candidacy for that year’s elections based on the Clean Record Law, which prevents politicians with second-instance court convictions from running for elective positions. The PT member was arrested after being convicted by the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region within the scope of Operation Lava Jato, in January 2018.
Lo Prete mentioned, in the news, four ministers who judged Lula’s candidacy at the time: Admar Gonzaga, Tarcisio Vieira, Luis Roberto Barroso and Rosa Weber. According to information on the TSE website, the four were together in court in August 2018, when Weber assumed the presidency of the court. Neither she nor any of the other ministers mentioned by Globo are part of the current composition of the court.
The verified publication does not say that TV Globo reported the rejection of Lula’s candidacy in 2022, but it also does not say that the content of the video is old. The author of the post, criticizing Lula, says that the impugnation of the PT’s candidacy is news for which “everyone is waiting” anxiously. Some of the people who shared the publication seem to have believed that the news published by Lo Prete is recent. “Is it true? If so, it’s the best decision in the world,” said one user. “They want him not to suffer the greatest shame of the century. […] Bolsonaro re-elected,” said another.
At the end of August, the TSE began to analyze the candidates for the presidency in the 2022 elections. Lula’s candidacy took place this Thursday (8) – and the court approved it. Released in 2019 after the decision of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) that prohibited the imprisonment of convicts after the second instance, the PT resumed political rights in 2021, with the annulment of your cases of Lava Jato in Curitiba.
The candidate leads the polls most recent voting intentions, followed by Jair Bolsonaro, from the PL.
misleading, for Comprova, is content taken from the original context and used in another so that its meaning undergoes changes; that uses inaccurate data or that leads to an interpretation different from the author’s intention; content that confuses, with or without the deliberate intent to cause harm.
Scope of publication: As of September 6, the verified post had logged 7.5 million views on TikTok. The publication was no longer available in the late afternoon of the same day.
What the author of the publication says: Comprova contacted the author of the publication through social networks, but did not get a response until the verification was closed. A few hours after the first message of the report, however, the video had been deleted from the author’s TikTok account.
How do we check: To verify the content of the misleading publication, Comprova searched, on the Globoplay website, for the video in which Lo Prete reported the rejection of Lula’s candidacy for the Presidency in 2018. The original recording appears in the duty files from TV Globo (short bulletin that interrupts regular programming when there is urgent news) with the date of August 31 of that year. The duty was shown shortly before Jornal da Globo, a news program presented at the end of the night by Lo Prete.
The report also consulted the TSE website to compare the court composition in August 2018 with the current one. Another verification step was search, on Googlenews about the outcome of the trial of Lula’s candidacy registration in the 2022 elections.
In 2018, the Justice rejected Lula’s candidacy
In August 2018, TSE ministers decided to reject Lula’s candidacy request, which would run for the presidency of Brazil. The vote ended in 6 votes to 1 for the impeachment.
As reported by the G1, in the session, most ministers also prohibited PT from campaigning as a candidate, including TV and radio advertisements. At the time, the party replaced him with Fernando Haddad as its candidate.
In January 2018, the former president had been convicted by the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region, in the second instance, for passive corruption and money laundering, in case of the triplex in Guarujá (SP). The conviction, which took place as part of Operation Car Wash, led to the rejection of Lula’s candidacy seven months later. Nonetheless, the presidential candidate has been in prison since April and served 19 months in Curitiba (PR).
In 2021, the minister Edson Fachinof STF, overturned the convictions Lula and made him eligible again. In the decision, the minister understood that the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, responsible for Lava Jato cases, was not a competent body to judge the case. The minister argued that as the cases were related to Petrolão, a corruption scandal at Petrobras in the 2010s, they should have been tried by the Federal District Court.
Who were the court ministers at the time
According to the TSE website, the court ministers in August 2018 were Rose Weber (in the presidency), Luís Roberto Barroso, Edson Fachin, Og Fernandes, Luis Felipe Salomão, Jorge Mussi, Tarcisio Vieira de Carvalho Neto, Sérgio Silveira Baths and Admar Gonzaga Neto. Napoleão Nunes Maia Filho was also part of the court, but left the court at the end of that month, shortly before Lula’s trial.
Seven of these judges analyzed the case at the time: Barroso, Mussi, Fernandes, Gonzaga Neto, Vieira, Weber and Fachin. Barroso, rapporteur of the action, voted for the exclusion of PT’s candidacy that year. All the ministers followed the vote, with the exception of Fachin.
In 2022, the composition of the TSE is different. According to information on the court’s website, only Fachin and Baths remained in the courtroom. Alexandre de Moraes, Minister of the STF, assumed the presidency of the electoral court on August 16th. Ricardo Lewandowski, Benedito Gonçalves, Mauro Luiz Campbell Marques and Carlos Bastide Horbach are also part of the current composition of the TSE.
2022 candidacy
The PT made Lula’s candidacy official for the Presidency of the Republic in the 2022 federal elections on July 21. The act was formalized during an event in São Paulo with the presence of Geraldo Alckmin (PSB), candidate for vice president on the ticket with PT, and other members of the Brasil da Esperança coalition. Lula was in Pernambuco and did not participate in the event.
The application record can be consulted in the unified public consultation of the TSE. On Thursday (8), the court ruled, unanimously, to approve Lula and Alckmin’s ticket in these elections. Rapporteur of the case, Minister Carlos Horbach informed that both meet the eligibility conditions required by the Federal Constitution and the electoral law, and there is no legal reason that prevents them from running as candidates.
why do we investigate: Comprova investigates suspicious content that goes viral on the internet related to this year’s presidential elections, the covid-19 pandemic and public policies of the federal government. Content out of context about the elections can influence the voter’s conception of a particular candidate, hindering the free exercise of the vote and the Brazilian democratic system as a whole.
Other checks on the topic: Agency Magnifying Glass, Estadão Check, Fact or Fake (from G1), Rumors.org and e-farces they also checked publications on social networks and messaging apps that publicized the TV Globo video as if it were current.
Recently, Comprova produced other checks on Lula, showing that a video was manipulated to insert offense to Lula in speech by supporter in Pernambuco,that removal of rice producers from indigenous lands was not Lula’s determination is that the former president did not rent the most expensive plane in the world on a trip to the Northeast.
Investigated by: Nexo, NSC, Metrópoles and Alma Preta; Verified by: Piauí, Correio, Crusoé, Uol, A Gazeta, Estado de S.Paulo, Correio, Correio Braziliense and O Popular
Source: CNN Brasil
