Free Speech Under Siege? Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro FORCED to pay fine of R$10.100 (US$2500)
BRAZIL - The Brazilian President must now pay a fine of US$2500 after being charged for 'moral damages' by leftist Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT).
In a shocking display of abuse of court power, the Brazilian Workers Party, a democratic socialist party, has charged Jair Bolsonaro over comments made over 15 years ago.
The accuser, a legislator by the name of Maria do Rosario has been successful in forcing Jair to pay a damages fine, after a local judge ruled that the President had committed a so-called 'gender aggression' with a controversial insult made against the lawmaker in 2014.
In 2003, Bolsonaro was also recorded on television cameras saying that "he would not rape her because she does not deserve it."
A comment that he had repeated to her on December 9, 2014, in a session of Congress.
Later he defended himself from naysayers, by declaring that he meant that "she does not deserve to be raped because she is very bad and very ugly.”
After an ongoing legal battle, a judge from the 18th Civil Court of Brasilia (the capital), has said that the Brazilian legislator won a civil ruling decreed.
The now President has been internationally named by liberals and leftists alike, as the “Trump of the Tropics”, due to supposed similarities with his North American counterpart.
President Jair Bolsonaro will have 15 days to pay around US$2,500 and retract publicly through a means of communication of national circulation.
To put that fine into perspective, the median Brazilian wage for a month is R$11,096 per month; the fine is R$10,100 -- Jair is effectively being charged for more than a whole month's wage for fifty percent of earners, who earn less than the median wage.