TSE meeting seeks to contain Lula–Flávio legal clash

TSE meeting seeks to contain Lula–Flávio legal clash
TSE President Kassio Nunes Marques is due to meet legal representatives from the campaigns of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro on Tuesday, without the candidates present, as electoral litigation intensifies before the second-round vote. The meeting was scheduled amid a wave of mutual accusations and court filings; one account says 85 cases were brought in the first week of the runoff alone.

Both accounts place the WhatsApp channel known as “Exército de Lula” at the centre of the dispute. Nunes Marques ordered it suspended on Sunday after a complaint from Flávio’s campaign, but electoral inspector Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva restored it hours later while evidence-gathering was still under way. The matter may go to the full TSE, though no hearing date has been announced.

The campaigns draw sharply different conclusions from those events. Lula argued that the TSE president could not take sides and challenged the court to identify an illegality that would justify blocking the channel. His side portrayed the suspension as part of overly broad action against the campaign.

Flávio’s campaign, by contrast, called Cueva’s reversal “astonishing,” alleging that the channel helped guide followers around Electoral Justice and WhatsApp controls. It says the structure, coordinated by federal deputy André Janones and followed by more than 3.7 million users, was used to spread disinformation.

The court’s technical staff has added a more qualified assessment. It reported finding no repetitions, in posts reviewed between October 2 and 11, of the claims already examined in the case, while identifying possible electoral risks. That leaves neither campaign’s broader account settled: the immediate content findings narrow the inquiry, but questions about the channel’s organisation and its potential effects remain open.

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