ISTANBUL: Brazil's electoral court has fined President Jair Bolsonaro's party after it insisted on contesting elections following its defeat in last month's general election.

The Liberal Party was ordered on Wednesday by court president Alexandre de Moraes to pay 23 million reais ($4.3 million) for acting in "bad faith" and attempting to damage Brazil's electronic voting system. Moraes also prevented the Liberal Party from receiving public funds and referred the matter to the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, Bolsonaro's party argued that older electronic voting machines had flaws, making it impossible to accurately identify the devices, and demanded that any vote cast using them be thrown out.

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The party claimed in a complaint filed Tuesday that the conservative president would win re-election with 51.05% of the vote, if only the most recent model of voting machines is believed to be reliable.

As a condition of considering the matter, the Liberal Party was required to extend the challenge to the first round of voting. Many of their own members who won seats in the Congress during the first round would have been offended if they had done so.

Even though the electoral court dismissed the complaint, the allegations infuriated Bolsonaro's most ardent supporters. Many of them still block highways across Brazil, repeating baseless allegations of election fraud and demanding military intervention.

Bolsonaro and his allies are pressuring party president Valdemar da Costa Neto to question the election result, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

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Costa Neto has made every effort to placate the president without influencing the electoral process. People claimed that before publishing the article casting doubt on Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's victory, he contacted Supreme Court justices to clarify his motivations. He requested anonymity to discuss private party matters.

Regardless of their political ideologies, the Liberal Party has historically supported those in power as its members focused more on securing federal funding for initiatives in their home states.

During his first two terms in office, it served as an important ally for Lula, and one of its members was the vice president at the time, José Alencar.

Joining Bolsonaro and the group of candidates he supports to run in this year's election, the party became the largest in Congress, electing 99 of the 513 members of the lower house. Currently, Bolsonaro's supporters make up about a third of the country's elected lawmakers.

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Parties with more representatives in the legislature have access to a greater share of public funds allocated to support them. Costa Neto must stop Bolsonaro's supporters from leaving the party ahead of his swearing-in ceremony in February if he wants to retain control of those funds.