Brazil’s parliament descended into chaos on Tuesday as conservative lawmakers continued to push a law which would reduce the prison sentence of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
One left-wing lawmaker was forcibly removed by police after trying to disrupt proceedings, while footage showed scuffles breaking out as security tried to restore order.
Bolsonaro began a 27-year jail term in November for attempting to plot a coup following his 2022 election defeat.
His conservative allies in Congress have proposed a law which would reduce sentences for coup-related offences, as well as free dozens of Bolsonaro supporters who stormed government buildings shortly after he left office.
Meanwhile, court documents showed that Bolsonaro’s legal team filed an official request asking a court to grant him permission to leave prison for surgery.
The appeal repeats a plea for the ex-president to be allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest on health grounds. Bolsonaro spent time in intensive care earlier this year following intestinal surgery, and was stabbed in the abdomen in 2018 during a rally.
The fate of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist who was narrowly beaten by leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva three years ago, continues to be a divisive issue in Brazil, where his allies have explored several avenues to exonerate him.
The latest attempt to cut the 70-year-old’s sentence has been to propose a law overhauling punishments for people in elected office, including significantly reducing sentences for the offences that Bolsonaro, and those convicted alongside him, were found guilty of.
One of the lawmakers behind the effort told AFP news agency it would see Bolsonaro’s sentence cut to two years and four months in prison.
During Tuesday’s heated debate on the proposal, leftist politician Glauber Braga briefly occupied the Speaker’s chair, which he said was a protest against a “coup offensive”.
The chamber had been due to vote on Braga’s expulsion for his role in a previous altercation in Congress, one of a handful of removals proposed as part of a wider package of disciplinary reforms, including the changes to coup-related offences.
Police forcibly removed Braga amid a skirmish in the chamber. The TV feed was cut and reporters were removed from the chamber, a move condemned as censorship by a group representing journalists.
Braga later said he would not “accept as a done deal an amnesty for a group of coup plotters”, AFP reported.
As of late Tuesday night, the law cutting Bolsonaro’s sentence – which would require ratification by the legislature’s second house – had not passed.
Bolsonaro was given a lengthy prison sentence in September after Supreme Court judges found he had proposed a coup to military leaders, and said that he knew of a plot to assassinate his rival Lula.
While a military coup did not materialise, his supporters launched a violent assault on government buildings in Brasília in January 2023, after which thousands were detained.
Several senior military figures, two former defence ministers and an ex-intelligence chief were also convicted as part of the coup investigation.
Bolsonaro and his supporters have long dubbed the investigation a “witch hunt”.
His Liberal Party remains the largest in Congress, where conservative parties outnumber groupings sympathetic to Lula.
Lawmakers loyal to Bolsonaro previously launched an attempt to secure an amnesty, though that floundered in the face of national protests, with a significant cut to sentences now proposed as a compromise.
