Jair Bolsonaro, erstwhile Brazilian President, has been blocked from seeking public office for eight years, thereby removing him from the next presidential contest.
Mr Bolsonaro, 68, was blocked after a majority of judges on Brazil’s electoral court “voted” on Friday morning.
The judges ruled that Mr Bolsonaro violated the country’s election laws when, less than three months before last year’s vote, he summoned diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged.
The action of judges already dealt a significant blow to the country’s far-right movement.
Four of the court’s seven judges had voted that the ex-president abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats.
The decision would be a sharp and swift rebuke of Mr Bolsonaro and his effort to undermine Brazil’s elections.
With the voting, Mr Bolsonaro could only be able to run for president in 2030.
Just six months ago, he was president of one of the world’s largest democracies but now his career as a politician is in jeopardy.
The former president is expected to appeal the ruling to Brazil’s Supreme Court, though that body acted aggressively to rein in his power during his presidency.
He has harshly attacked the court and many of its justices for years, calling some of them “terrorists” and accusing them of trying to sway the vote against him.
Although, Mr Bolsonaro’s lawyers argued to the electoral court that his speech to diplomats was an “act of government” aimed at raising legitimate concerns about election security.
“Meeting with ambassadors: Is that a crime?” Mr Bolsonaro queried while fielding questions from newsmen.
He added that “Foreign policy is the prerogative of the president.”
Mr Bolsonaro would still face another 15 cases in the electoral court even if his appeal was successful.
He had earlier been accused of improperly using public funds to influence the vote and that his campaign ran a coordinated misinformation campaign.
These cases could also block him from seeking the presidency.
He is also linked to several criminal investigations, involving whether he provoked his supporters to raid Brazil’s halls of power on January 8 and whether he was involved in a scheme to falsify his vaccine records.
Mr Bolsonaro was a shock to Brazil’s politics when he was elected president in 2018.
The ex-president, a former army captain and fringe far-right congressman, rode a populist wave to the presidency on an anti-corruption campaign.
His lone term was marked by controversy from the start.
Mr Bolsonaro’s tenure was marred by sharp rise in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a hands-off approach to the pandemic that left nearly 700,000 dead in Brazil, including harsh attacks against the press and the judiciary.
