Credit, Sebastião Moreira/EPA/Shutterstock
On Thursday (5/11), the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) opened the way for the processing of an action that could, at the limit, lead to the revocation of the ticket and the mandates of re-elected president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and vice-president Geraldo Alckmin (PSB) and leaving them ineligible for eight years.
The General Inspector of Electoral Justice, Minister Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, considered admissible an Electoral Judicial Investigation Action (AIJE) filed by the Novo party against the PT ticket in this year's elections, when Lula beat Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ).
The party accuses the Lula-Alckmin ticket of having committed abuse of political power by taking at least 35 measures using public resources to obtain votes throughout the year 2026. Among these measures is the increase in the value of Bolsa Família, announced by the government on the eve of the first round of elections.
Cueva's decision does not mean that the TSE considered Novo's accusations to be valid. The minister simply decided that the party's action met the legal requirements to proceed. He also ordered that Lula and Alckmin be notified to present their defense within five days.
Despite not having made any judgment on the merits of Novo's request, Cuêva's decision began a process that, ultimately, could lead to an unprecedented outcome: the impeachment of a President of the Republic in office for an electoral crime.
But although, in theory, it could lead to the revocation of Lula and Alckmin's ticket, electoral law experts interviewed by BBC News Brasil assess the chances of this happening as small.
According to them, although the acts carried out by the government could, in theory, be used as evidence of an attempt to unbalance the electoral dispute, for the prosecution, it would be difficult to establish that a certain government action led voters to vote more or less for Lula.
Credit, Roque de Sá/Agência Senado
Novo’s accusations against the Lula-Alckmin ticket
According to Cueva's decision, Novo accuses the Lula government of having issued, between January 1st and October 16th, 2026, 35 provisional measures and decrees that created or expanded social benefits for the population.
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According to the party, this number would be equal to all measures taken by the government in the previous three years of the current term.
In Novo's assessment, what constitutes abuse of political power would not be the content of the measures, but their concentration in the months leading up to the presidential contest.
O Novo cita, por exemplo:
In the first round, Lula obtained 45.16% of the votes, while his main opponent received 47.03%. Lula, however, reversed his defeat in the first round, beating Flávio by 51.74% to 48.26%.
The action accepted by the TSE is one of three filed by Novo against the Lula-Alckmin ticket, according to the senator elected by Novo from Paraná, Deltan Dallagnol.
"We ask the TSE to revoke the Lula-Alckmin ticket and make them both ineligible for eight years. We will not accept that a president uses Brazilians' money to unbalance an election and then treats everything as normal," said Dallagnol in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
What happens now?
Lawyer and electoral law specialist Alberto Rollo details to BBC News Brasil what the next steps in the process will be.
According to him, after receiving the action, the lawyers for the Lula-Alckmin ticket will have up to five working days to present a preliminary defense in which they must contest the allegations of Novo's action.
After that, says Rollo, the evidence production phase will begin. It will be up to the rapporteur to decide, together with the prosecution and defense, which evidence will be admitted in the process. In cases like this, it is common for both parties to request public documents, statements from public servants involved in the aforementioned measures and independent expertise.
This phase can last for months, says the lawyer.
Once the production of evidence is complete, the prosecution, defense and Electoral Public Prosecutor's Office can present final arguments.
After this phase, it is the rapporteur's turn to prepare his vote on the case. Once completed, the report is sent to the Presidency of the TSE, currently in charge of the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Kássio Nunes Marques.
After that, it will be up to the Presidency of the Court to judge the case. For the ticket to be revoked, it is necessary to have the vote of at least four of the seven ministers of the court.
If the TSE determines the revocation of the ticket, at least two scenarios are possible. Firstly, if this happens before the middle of the third year of Lula's new term and also affects Alckmin, it will be necessary to hold a new presidential election.
If the impeachment takes place with less than six months left in the term, whoever assumes the government will be the future president of the Chamber of Deputies.
As a last resort, the ticket's defense may still appeal to the STF if it understands that any rights were violated throughout the process.
On the other hand, if the TSE decides that the ticket did not commit abuses, the process is closed.
Alberto Rollo says that, despite there being several acts issued by the government that could be classified as abuse of political power by the prosecution, Novo tends to face difficulties in making its argument prevail.
A central point in the action, according to Rollo, will be to define whether the 35 measures listed by the New are serious enough to characterize abuse of power.
"The main difficulty of Novo will be proving that one or more government measures had a direct impact on the population's vote. It is a cause and effect relationship that is very difficult to establish", says the lawyer.
The assessment is similar to that of lawyer and master in Constitutional Law Emma Roberta Palú Bueno, who is also a specialist in electoral law.
"This causal link is very difficult to prove, even though we have already seen decisions like this in city halls or state governments. The Novo will have to prove that the voter, when voting, was influenced by these measures or that they had no way to defend themselves against their electoral effects. It is something very difficult to materialize in a process", he states.
Both Rollo and Emma assess the chances of the process initiated by Novo resulting in the revocation of the Lula-Alckmin ticket as unlikely.
"I think it's difficult for this to happen. We've had actions like this, but there has never been an impeachment of a sitting president for abuse of political power. Furthermore, I return to the question of merit: how will it be proven that Lula obtained more than 4 million more votes just because he increased the value of Bolsa Família, for example?", he says.
Emma Palú Bueno's assessment is similar.
"The legal good defended is the fairness of the election and the freedom to vote. As much as the arguments of the action are relevant, I find it difficult to conclude that it was these announcements that made the voter decide in one direction or the other. I think the ministers will have difficulty accepting the idea that these measures interfered with the voter's decision", he says.
BBC News Brasil sought out PT's legal coordination, but received no response.
Similar actions against Bolsonaro and Dilma
The process filed by Novo is called the Electoral Judicial Investigation Action (AIJE). It is the same type of action filed by the PT against former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and which led to his ineligibility in 2023.
At the time, the PT accused Bolsonaro of abusing political power by calling a meeting with ambassadors from foreign countries in Brasília in which he criticized the Brazilian electoral system.
In that trial, the court concluded, by five votes to two, that Bolsonaro had committed abuse of political power and misused the media by using the structure of the Presidency to attack the electoral system.
As Bolsonaro had been defeated by Lula and was no longer serving as President when the trial took place, there was no presidential mandate to be revoked.
Months later, in another AIJE, the TSE condemned him again, this time alongside his candidate for vice, Walter Braga Netto, for abuse of political and economic power related to the celebrations of September 7, 2022.
In 2014, the PSDB took a similar action against the ticket of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and Michel Temer (MDB). The trial only took place in 2017, when Dilma had already been removed in an impeachment process and Temer occupied the Presidency. At the time, the TSE deemed the action unfounded and maintained the validity of the ticket, leading Temer to continue in power.
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