Brazil’s Electoral Authority Implements Censorship Ahead of Elections
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) issued new censorship orders on Wednesday as the country gets ready for its presidential elections this weekend.
The elections are set for Sunday, October 4, and there’s a lot of speculation around a likely runoff on October 25 between the incumbent socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.
In the last week, the presidential campaign for 2026 has sparked new controversies surrounding both candidates. Senator Bolsonaro accused his opponents of running a fake news campaign aimed at discrediting him, specifically a claim that he intends to strip the title of Brazil’s patron saint from Nossa Senhora do Aparecida, a title held dearly by many Brazilian Catholics for over 300 years.
Bolsonaro, an Evangelical Christian, is running for office in the wake of his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, serving a ban and imprisonment following charges related to “crimes against democracy.” Globonews, which Bolsonaro labeled a “central hub” for the spread of this misinformation, later issued a public retraction and apology upon confirming the allegations were unfounded.
On Wednesday, three out of five TSE justices ordered the complete removal of social media content related to this fake news campaign against Bolsonaro, affirming an earlier ruling by Supreme Court Justice and TSE member André Mendoça, which was prompted by a request from Bolsonaro’s campaign team.
This ruling came after a series of conflicting court decisions. Initially, Mendoça decided to censor the posts, only for another Supreme Court member, Flávio Dino, to overturn that decision. The back and forth led to Edson Fachin, head of the Supreme Court, bringing the issue to a vote.
Metrópoles reported that Mendoça argued the removal of posts related to misinformation wasn’t an act of censorship since the information had been proven false, thus not violating free speech rights. He maintained that it didn’t impose prior control over future expressions or require judicial clearance for new publications.
Meanwhile, President Lula stirred controversy with comments suggesting Brazilian girls learn to “get touched” at a young age, a statement that his party said referred specifically to cervical cancer screenings.
The TSE also imposed censorship on conservative lawmaker Nikolas Ferreira following his remarks about Lula’s controversial statement. Ferreira, a Congressman from Minas Gerais, expressed his outrage in a video questioning the explanation given by Lula’s party. In the still-accessible video, he suggested that a pedophile could be listening to Lula’s remarks, asserting that “girls aren’t to be touched from an early age.”
Justice Estela Aranha from the TSE reportedly gave Ferreira 24 hours to take down the video, claiming he misinterpreted the president’s comments and added a sexual connotation to them. She instructed him not to repost the video or to create any similar content without facing pending fines.
Ferreira responded by highlighting the irony of Lula only requesting the video’s removal and not a right to reply, alluding to Lula’s own appointment of Justice Aranha to the TSE in 2025.
Lula’s reaction to Ferreira’s video was furious. He called him a “bastard” at a campaign rally, while the First Lady referred to Ferreira as a “little shit.” Lula also labeled Ferreira a “complete idiot” in a subsequent interview for disseminating what he viewed as misinformation.
The TSE has a history of issuing censorship rulings during election periods. In 2022, for instance, the tribunal prohibited the Bolsonaro campaign and the media from calling Lula a “thief” or “criminal,” despite his past corruption convictions. Conversely, the TSE did not censor Lula’s campaign, which repeatedly accused Bolsonaro of being a “pedophile” and “cannibal.”
