“We have become a country of offenses”, says Barroso after being interrupted in Oxford

The Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF ) Luis Roberto Barroso stated this Saturday (25) that Brazil has become a “country of offenses”, after being interrupted at an event in the United Kingdom, when defending the Brazilian electoral process.

Barroso said that, when he presided over the Superior Electoral Court (TSE ) between 2020 and 2022, had to “offer resistance to attacks against democracy and prevent this abominable setback that would be the return of the printed vote with manual public counting, which has always been the path of fraud in Brazil”.

At this point, the minister was interrupted by a man and a woman, who said it was a “lie” that critics of electronic voting machines ask for manual counting. Barroso replied that she could look up the information on the internet and that he was just citing one fact.

“The official speech was, I quote, ‘printed vote, with manual public count’, I close quotes. Just look,” said Barroso. “With all due respect, if you go anywhere, you will hear from the President of the Republic, and from the author of the proposal, who wanted a printed vote with manual public count. This is a fact. From there, everyone can think what they want, but that’s a fact.”

Speaking about the interruption, the minister added: “This is one of the problems that we are experiencing in Brazil, an immense deficit of civility.”

“One thing that happened in Brazil is that conservative thinking, which is legitimate, was captured by rudeness, offense, lack of respect. The subject says in the name of God ‘I want you to die’, all contrary to what Christianity preaches. So I think a clash of civility is what we need,” Barroso said. “We need to regain the ability to dissent with respect, we have become a country of offenses.”

President Jair Bolsonaro has defended in recent years the approval of a PEC that would implement a system for printing votes in the electronic ballot box, which would then be counted. The bill was voted on in the House plenary in 2021, but did not get the votes needed to pass .

Barroso also said that, despite having discussed the role of electronic voting in the electoral process, he would have liked to have focused his management at the TSE on the discussion of topics such as increasing diversity in politics, with women in party governing bodies and changing the system. election for the mixed district.

In the speech, held at an event in Oxford University the STF minister also returned to talk about the situation in the Amazon which, according to him, damages Brazil’s image abroad and has become the target of international gangs.

“Brazil’s image is experiencing the discredit of an ascending devastation of the Amazon, whose sovereignty we are losing is not to other countries, we are losing to organized crime”, stated Barroso.