Event Summary
On 8 January 2026, Brazil’s President issued a total veto (VET 3/2026) to PL 2.162/2023 (“PL da Dosimetria”), a bill that had been approved by Congress in December 2025 and would have softened sentencing and sentence-execution rules for crimes including those linked to the 2023 anti-democratic attacks and other offences. On 8 January 2023, following a prolonged campaign of institutional delegitimization of Brazil’s electoral system and democratic checks, supporters of former President Bolsonaro had invaded several federal buildings and called for the military to remove the elected President Lula. Several instigators of the coup, including former President Bolsonaro, were convicted for violently attacking the Democratic Rule of Law, among other charges, leading to prison sentences that could be reduced under the proposed law, which passed Congress without civil society participation.
The veto explicitly frames the proposed Bill as undermining accountability and constitutional order and must now be reviewed in a joint session of the National Congress. Importantly, an override requires an absolute majority in both chambers—41 senators and 257 deputies—meaning that proponents must build majorities in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies simultaneously. Until then, uncertainty remains over whether Congress will attempt to retroactively reduce penalties for anti-democratic violence and broaden leniency through execution-of-sentence rules.
The dispute has direct implications for civil society’s enabling environment: civil society actors—especially those working on democratic accountability, human rights, anti-corruption, and environmental protection—face uncertainty over whether the legal system will maintain deterrence against anti-democratic violence or normalize legislative relief after the fact. The uncertainty of whether the veto will hold also affects legal predictability for rights-based advocacy and will have an impact on public narratives either reinforcing or relativizing accountability for attacks on democratic institutions, depending on the outcome.
Brazilian civil society coalitions, legal NGOs, victims’ groups and pro-democracy movements have expressed their opposition to any attempt to override the veto, including through protests in December 2025, highlighting the importance of accountability for the coup attempts for rule of law, equality before the law, and deterrence against anti-democratic violence.