The Joe Biden administration did not invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the Summit of the Americas because of their apparent lack of democracy. The same logic, however, did not extend to the Brazilian president.
The Joe Biden administration has justified its decision not to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the Summit of the Americas held last week (June 6-10) in Los Angeles by saying that these three countries are ruled by undemocratic regimes. Fine. Democracy is desirable and noble.
But why did the Americans invite Jair Bolsonaro, who is an imminent and clear danger to Brazilian democracy? Are they not aware that the Brazilian president has made his admiration for military dictatorship and contempt for democracy publicly, eloquently and consistently on numerous occasions? He had glorified the army officer who had tortured Dilma Rouseff, the former Brazilian president.
“Elections won’t change anything in this country,” an angry Bolsonaro told an interviewer on the programme Câmara Aberta, broadcast by TV Band in 1999. “It will only change on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000 people. If we kill some innocent people that’s fine because in every war innocent people die.” Shouting at the interviewer, an intemperate Bolsonaro said that if he became president, he would dissolve Congress on his first day in office.
The Brazilian president’s admiration for military dictatorship extends beyond the borders of Brazil. During his visit to Chile, he praised Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, causing embarrassment to his hosts.
Bolsonaro had instigated mobs to protest against the judiciary and the Congress with anti-democratic slogans. He had refused to accept the defeat of Donald Trump for a long time. His senator son praised the right-wing hooligans who attacked the Capitol on January 6, commenting that the uprising could have succeeded if the protestors were better armed. The father and his fascist sons are threatening Washington DC-style attacks if Bolsonaro loses the coming October elections. They have been asking their supporters to buy arms and be prepared. To facilitate this, the Bolsonaro administration has loosened gun laws – as a result of which there is an explosive increase in civilian guns in the country.
Bolsonaro has politicised the armed forces and militarised the civilian government. He has included several thousand military officers at various levels of civilian government. He has done it to use those military officials to support him from within. This is evident from the way the defence minister Paulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira is openly challenging and attacking the authority of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and is casting doubts on the e-voting system, although Bolsonaro himself was also elected by the same system. One of his politician sons made a threatening statement, saying that the Supreme Court could be closed “just with a soldier and a corporal”.
Bolsonaro has vitiated the democratic system, institutions and norms systematically. He is planning to do worse. He is a threat to Brazilian democracy.
Heads of delegation pose for a family photo during the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, US, June 10, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake
So if Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were indeed not invited to the Summit of the Americas because of their lack of demomcracy, it is logical that the US should also not have invited Bolsonaro.
Therefore, the US’s decision to invite him may not be logical – but it does serve a purpose. That purpose has nothing to do with democracy or Brazil. The US wants to help Bolsonaro to defeat Lula da Silva, who they consider a threat to US interests.
When he was president, Lula challenged the hegemony of the US and the neoliberal policies imposed by the Washington Consensus in Latin America. He competed with the US for leadership in Latin America.
He worked with Hugo Chavez and Cristina Kirchner and killed the US initiative to form the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) at the Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas in 2005.
Lula tried to restore Manuel Zelaya to the Honduran presidency after he was overthrown in a coup supported by the US in 2009.
He took initiatives for regional integration of Latin America with the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). These were aimed to give collective strength to the region through which the US domination was to be resisted.
Lula raised the regional and global profile of Brazil, working with others for a multipolar world and challenging the unilateralism of the US.
It is for this reason that American intelligence and spy agencies worked with Brazilian judge Sergio Moro in the Lava Jato corruption scandal and managed to put Lula in jail and prevented him from contesting in the last elections. Moro was rewarded by Bolsonaro, who made him justice minister.
In contrast, President Bolsonaro has single-handedly brought down the global and regional profile of Brazil through his isolationist policies and rhetoric. He has tarnished the image of Brazil and antagonised foreign leaders with his vulgar comments. He disrupted the process of regional integration and alienated fellow Latin American countries. His actions have seen many countries shun Brazil.
He has cut down the multilateral initiatives of the Brazilian foreign ministry and discarded the traditional South-South solidarity policies of the previous governments. He has forced the Brazilian diplomats to vote with the US on UN resolutions on which Brazil had voted against or abstained in the past. The Americans are immensely pleased with him. No one could have carried out the American agenda in Brazil better than Bolsonaro. So the Americans want Bolsonaro to win and Lula to lose.
Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gestures during an event with members of political parties and social movements in Porto Alegre, Brazil June 1, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Diego Vara
Bolsonaro is the first ever pro-American president of Brazil. During his 2019 visit to the US, he tweeted, “For the first time in a while, a pro-America Brazilian president arrives in DC.” He had made an unusual visit to the CIA headquarters. This was bizarre. No foreign president goes to the CIA office. According to diplomatic protocol, it should have been the CIA director who should have called on him and not the other way. After the visit, Eduardo Bolsonaro described the CIA as “one of the most respected intelligence agencies in the world,” in a tweet. In July 2021, the CIA chief visited Brasilia and held talks with Bolsonaro.
It seems that the Americans and the Bolsonaro clan have been cooking something. One does not need much imagination to know what dish they are preparing. The Latin Americans know from their past experience that the American cookbook only has recipes for coups, destabilisation of unfriendly democratic governments and support for military dictatorships.
According to media reports, during the Americas Summit, Bolsonaro had asked Biden for help to defeat Lula and mentioned that Lula is a “danger to US interests”. Bolsonaro portrayed himself as a protector of US interests in Brazil. Now we know why the Americans invited the undemocratic Bolsonaro and gave him a photo-op in Los Angeles with President Biden. They want to extend a hand to Bolsonaro to increase his poll ratings. Both Bolsonaro and the US have a common agenda: to defeat Lula. But Lula is leading in the opinion polls and is likely to win.
A retired Indian Foreign Service officer, R. Viswanathan has served as Indian ambassador to Venezuela and Argentina.
Although Jair Bolsonaro and the Right are in a state of disarray, the former president’s path to the presidency in October 2022 is littered with contradictions – many difficult, some potentially dangerous.
The election of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro was a triumph for the Right. Backed by the Brazilian elite, he was carried to victory by an emboldened conservative movement spearheaded by fundamentalist evangelical churches and supporters of the military dictatorship that lasted between 1964 and 1985.
Ever since he took power in 2019, a debate has raged about whether Bolsonaro’s government can be characterised as ‘fascist’. All the while, emboldened by his victory, unambiguous fascism has seen a surge in popularity in Brazil. Membership in Brazilian neo-Nazi groups grew by 270% between January 2019 and May 2021. In Brazil, it is a crime to make, commercialise, and distribute Nazi material. This type of crime has also risen since 2015, with a sharp increase in occurrences since 2019. Meanwhile, both a famous Brazilian podcaster and a Congressman argued that Nazi parties should be made legal.
Although Bolsonaro has suffered blows to his popularity since taking office, with his approval rating sinking to 22%, it’s apparent that far-right ideology is still very present in Brazilian society. We, therefore, have to take seriously the prospect that it will play a role in the elections scheduled for October 2022.
Although there is speculation that, if close to losing, Bolsonaro might opt for a Congress seat to secure privileged status. Brazilians are currently set for a Bolsonaro versus Lula race. And while former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently favoured to win, it would be a terrible mistake to consider Bolsonaro’s defeat a done deal.
A recent poll shows that while Lula would win against any of the possible opponents in the second round — including Sergio Moro, the judge who wrongly persecuted and imprisoned him — his advantage against Bolsonaro has fallen from 22 to 15 percentage points. Since the Bolsonaro base often makes reference to the invasion of the US Capitol, and Bolsonaro himself has made threats of a coup in the past, the danger of foul play can’t be ruled out either.
In light of these threats, the Brazilian Left needs to think strategically about which alliances are necessary to win — and which are too contradictory to maintain.
A short history of contradictions
Brazil’s democratic history is full of high drama. In the three short decades since its current constitution was established, two presidents have been impeached, one was indirectly elected, and two others were vice presidents who held interim offices.
One of these impeachment processes was Dilma Rousseff’s in 2016, led by the country’s capitalist class and their allies on the Right. After years of negotiating under the Workers’ Party’s (PT) project of class conciliation as a way of ensuring governability, capitalists were fed up. The PT’s strategy was mixed, including concessions to the Right in Congress and a dose of austerity under former minister of finance Joaquim Levy. But these overtures were not sufficient to prevent the parliamentary coup that ousted Rousseff, orchestrated with the help of Rousseff’s vice president Michel Temer.
File photo of former Brazil president Dilma Rousseff gestures during a news conference for foreign journalists at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil. Photo: Reuters
In an attempt to draw lessons from the 2016 coup, Rousseff has emphasised that the strength of a government lies in organising the people and that the PT had lost much of its capacity to mobilise as a party. Mobilisation against the coup was erratic at first, and perhaps too late considering that the Brazilian Right had begun to harness popular dissatisfaction during the massive and heterogeneous protests of June 2013 and began calling for a coup as soon as Rousseff was reelected in 2014.
The radical Left, much smaller than the PT and its moderate Left allies, was also split at the time. For instance, whereas parts of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) took to the streets against the coup (and later against Lula’s imprisonment), others in PSOL took an “out with all of them” position against the PT government and other establishment politicians. Some even supported the Lava Jato investigation in its fraudulent crusade against corruption.
The issue of corruption has long had emotional resonance in Brazil, but the Left has struggled with how to politicise it, sometimes mimicking weak narratives that reduce corruption to a personal flaw rather than a characteristic of capitalist democracy and attendant conflicts within the capitalist state.
Meanwhile, bolsonarismo thrives on false “anti-corruption” pretences designed to appeal to moralism and chauvinist nationalism. The attacks on Lula as corrupt and a thief did not begin with Lava Jato nor with bolsonarismo, but the association has been strengthened in recent years and is due to renew itself in a new wave of fake news and online manipulation as the election approaches.
The use of fake news against the Left is increasingly common. Unfortunately, there are even cases of purposely defamatory claims made by Leftists against other Leftist personalities and organisations — symptomatic of the ongoing crisis and fragmentation of the Brazilian Left. This fragmentation is spurring debates on how to approach Lula’s race in 2022 and, in the case of electoral victory, how to mobilise and negotiate under a new Lula government. This is where the question of alliances comes in.
In June 2002, before winning his first presidential race, Lula published a “letter to the Brazilian people” which was, in fact, a letter to the financial sector. Its main message was that if elected, Lula’s government would pursue an agenda of “ample national negotiation” while also being respectful of previous contracts and pursuing fiscal balance.
For example, while it mentioned agrarian reform, the letter also stated that agribusiness should be valued. In order to solve the economic crisis, the letter said, the PT government would have to be in dialogue with all sectors of society, committed to controlling public spending even as it pursued a program of brave yet “responsible” changes.
Lula’s letter set the tone of his government as well as Rousseff’s. He promoted key social programmes and improved the quality of life of millions of Brazilians. However, the ambiguity of lulismo meant that bankers and agribusiness also grew and profited in record levels – a development that Lula often takes pride in, even though these same classes organised to overthrow Rousseff, promoted anti-working-class reforms with the Temer government, and later helped to elect Bolsonaro.
This contradiction is also present in 2022. Bolsonaro’s finance minister Paulo Guedes promised economic recovery but has left the capitalist class wanting. Even the richer and more educated members of Bolsonaro’s support base think the government lacks a strategy and that Bolsonaro’s authoritarian traits lead to unnecessary instability. When Bolsonaro’s threats against the Supreme Court became too overt, Temer had to step in and calm their nerves with a letter. In other words, Brazilian elites are not fully committed to Bolsonaro. They are up for grabs, and Lula has noticed.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. Photo: Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino.
To attract these free-floating elites, Lula has opted for a Right-wing vice president. From a Left standpoint, this is disappointing, especially considering that in 2018 the PT ticket featured Manuela D’Ávila, from the moderate Left Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), as the vice-presidential candidate.
Although yet to be made official, Lula and the PT have indicated their preference for Geraldo Alckmin. Alckmin was governor of São Paulo four times and his administration was marked by corruption scandals and violent treatment of social movements. It was under Alckmin that, in 2012, thousands of families were evicted from their territory, and had their homes destroyed while the police violently attacked pregnant women, children, and seniors in Pinheirinho. Alckmin has always opposed the PT, and made a point to associate Lula with criminality and corruption.
It seems, however, that Lula is willing to bury the hatchet. This isn’t sitting well with others on the Left who find the idea of Alckmin as VP repugnant and demoralising. It may be one thing to campaign for the Lula/Alckmin candidacy in a state in the Southern region, but in São Paulo workers tend to remember Alckmin’s cruelty.
Some members of the PT claim that linking up with Alckmin is the only way to defeat Bolsonaro, and are dismissing the Left’s objections as counterproductive at best. Moderates are rolling out the red carpet for Alckmin – who, even if he aspires to a political career beyond Bolsonaro, stands as a representative of the 2016 coup – while condemning the Left as obstructionists. The issue has reawakened the debates of June 2013, which led to the framing of the radical Left as responsible for the coup.
To make Lula president again
A few months ago, activists and influencers started to appear in red baseball caps that read “Make Brazil 2002 Again,” in reference to Lula’s first election as president of Brazil.
The irony of the cap and its slogan is that by imagining 2002 as the beginning of a great era, Lula supporters unwittingly endorse a morass of contradictions that eventually allowed the Right-wing to overthrow the PT government and install a leader with fascist ideals. Lula’s election signalled hope, but also restraint. Millions were able to eat three meals a day, but billionaires became richer along the way – and when the PT’s programme no longer served them, this empowered capitalist class took it down.
It is true that Brazil once had a president who cared if people lived or died, something that could have made a major difference during the pandemic, which has killed over six hundred thousand Brazilians under Bolsonaro’s leadership so far. But it’s important to move beyond this state of melancholic nostalgia and start asking strategic questions about who can be made into allies, and what lines should not be crossed.
To make Lula president again is an important goal. There are other Leftist alternatives, but none as strong as he is at the moment. However, Lula is no god. His election is not guaranteed, and his practice of class conciliation creates both stability and profound vulnerabilities at the same time.
Those who justify the selection of Alckmin as his VP claim that Lula knows what he’s doing. But if Dilma Rousseff is correct that the PT should have mobilised the people to support a Leftist government, it is a dangerous decision to elect a VP known for brutal repression against protestors and for promoting the coup that gave Rousseff’s VP the presidency for more than two years. Is it really the case that, out of all the center and Right-wing politicians that Lula could pick as VP for his strategy of governability, the best option is someone who played a role in the 2016 coup?
Lula has been Brazil’s best president so far, but even he can make mistakes. Let us hope that if he wins, he can make popular mobilisation a priority again.
Sabrina Fernandes is a Brazilian eco-socialist organiser and communicator with a sociology PhD from Carleton University, Canada. She is a postdoctoral fellow with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the person behind Marxist YouTube channel Tese Onze.
This article first appeared on Jacobin. Read the original article here.
Although Moro’s corruption busting brought him fame, his star has fallen in recent years as Lula’s conviction was reversed and he joined Bolsonaro’s government.
Brasilia: Sergio Moro, who became a household name in Brazil as the judge that led the country’s largest ever corruption probe, re-entered the political fray on Wednesday, presenting himself as a unifying centrist ahead of presidential elections next year.
Moro, 49, who jailed former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for corruption and then became justice minister under President Jair Bolsonaro before accusing him of misconduct and resigning, joined the centre-right Podemos party offering a solution to Brazil’s polarized politics.
Although Moro’s corruption busting brought him fame, his star has fallen in recent years as Lula’s conviction was reversed and he joined Bolsonaro’s government.
“I never had political ambitions. I just want to help,” he said in a speech at his affiliation to the party, adding that he was available to be a presidential candidate if necessary as an alternative to the expected face-off between Bolsonaro and Lula in October.
“There are other good names that have come forward so that the country can escape the extremes of lies, corruption and return to the past,” he said.
Moro left the judiciary to join far-right Bolsonaro’s cabinet as justice minister in 2019 determined to wipe out corruption in Brazil.
But he resigned last year after criticising Bolsonaro for interfering in the police force allegedly to protect his sons in corruption investigations.
Moro said he would be an anti-corruption candidate who would focus on eradicating poverty, reforming the state and privatizing its many enterprises that have been a source of graft and bribery.
He rose to fame in 2015 as the federal judge conducting the high-profile Lava Jato, or Car Wash, investigation that uncovered a multi-billion-dollar graft and bribery scheme, mainly involving state oil company Petrobras, that led to the arrest of dozens of business executives and politicians.
Lula was jailed in 2018 on a corruption conviction handed down by Moro for receiving bribes from an engineering company that won government contracts when he was president.
He was released a year and a half later after the Supreme Court annulled his convictions when it overturned a rule that defendants should be jailed after losing their first appeal.
Operation Car Wash, the probe into the ‘world’s biggest corruption scandal’, has turned out to be a scandal itself.
Sao Paulo: If a tweet tells a story, this one was perfect. And it came with a photo worth a thousand words. “Returning from Brasilia. See you soon,” Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva tweeted last Friday, with a snap in which the former Brazilian president is sitting in the back seat of a sedan, with his eyes focused on a document in his left hand. In the backdrop, framed with the car’s window, stand two towers with a saucer-like structure on either side and flags of different nations fluttering on the avenue which flanks this edifice. This complex, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, is Brazil’s Congress: the right-side up saucer hosts the Senate, while the upside-down one is the Chamber of Deputies. No building in Brazil represents politics – and power – as this futuristic creation.
It was hard to miss the symbolism in Lula’s tweet. Put on a trial for corruption, sent to jail and barred from the 2018 elections, the former president travelled to the capital last week from Sao Paulo, where he lives, after a long hiatus. Dressed in a blue shirt and deep blue jacket and looking every bit a statesman, Lula, 75, was announcing his return to the centre of national politics as President Jair Bolsonaro drags the country through a raging pandemic and rising poverty. Under the Senate’s dome, captured in Lula’s photo, a congressional commission is investigating Bolsonaro for his handling of the pandemic.
A country has only one president at a time – one who holds the office and leads it. That president, Bolsonaro, was clicked on Friday riding a motorbike with a billionaire buddy, without masks or helmets and laughing as he led a procession of his supporters on the way to inaugurate a bridge. The photo was tweeted by the president’s office. The contrast in two photos couldn’t be clearer: the president in power is busy firing up his far-right base; the former president is ready to lead the country out of misery – again.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro riding a bike with his billionaire backer Luciano Hang during an official engagement last Friday. Photo: Twitter/@planalto
Since early March, after a Supreme Court judge, Justice Edson Fachin, overturned Lula’s conviction, he has been giving interviews and speeches, focused on ways to combat the pandemic. After April 16, when the full bench of the court confirmed Justice Fachin’s decision, Lula began to signal that he was ready to run for office again. Landing in Brasilia on last Monday, Lula set up an office in a hotel, just three km away from the Congress, and lined up meetings with politicians from across the ideological spectrum and ambassadors from countries such as China, Germany and Argentina to discuss the COVID-19 crisis, the environmental problem and political issues which will dominate the next presidential elections in October 2022.
With his eyes on presidency, the Workers Party leader has plunged into the rough and tumble of Brazilian politics from where he was banished in the most brazen manner.
A hero and a villain
Lula served as Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010. During his presidency, Brazil’s economy boomed, poverty fell and the country emerged as a major player in world affairs. When he left office, Lula had the approval rating of 87%. The same year his former chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, was elected as Brazil’s first female president. Rousseff won the re-election in 2014. It was the fourth straight victory for the Workers Party (PT). It was the fourth successive defeat for the Social Democratic Party (PSDB), which had been in power from 1994 to 2002. As Rousseff began her second term amid the anticipation that Lula would be back as the PT candidate in 2018, the right-wing PSDB became desperate. It was staring at irrelevance.
Something needed to be done to stop Lula and PT.
In March 2014, just weeks into Rousseff’s second term, the federal police branch in the city of Curitiba launched a probe against a money exchanger, who used a petrol pump in Brasilia for his business. Dubbed as “Operation Car Wash” and driven by a Curitiba judge named Sergio Moro, the operation grew in scope by the week, even reaching a former director of the state oil company Petrobras and the construction giant Odebrecht. Tearing apart companies and landing politicians in jail, the operation reached the doorsteps of Lula da Silva, who was accused of accepting bribes.
Between 2014 and 2016, as the operation grew, Sergio Moro turned into a public figure. Appearing regularly on magazine covers and regularly praised on prime-time news, Moro became a middle-class hero as he was projected as a “saviour” of Brazil who would be a president soon. Moro’s stock rose not just at home but also abroad, especially in the US, where he was paraded as a judge who was cleaning up Brazil. In 2016, Moro was invited by the Wilson Center in Washington, DC to speak about “Handling political corruption cases in Brazil”. Appearing under the headline, “Sergio Moro, the Brazilian judge who brings down presidents”, Moro was chosen as one of the 50 “personalities of the decade” by the Financial Times newspaper.
On both sides of the Atlantic, Moro was a presented as a hero who was using law to clear the corruption-filled swamp Brazilian politics and economy.
As every hero needs a villain to complete the picture, Lula was turned into a symbol of corruption as the Brazilian media filled their columns with the stories leaked by the prosecutors who led the Car Wash probe. Known as the Republic of Curitiba, the prosecutors, led by Deltan Dallagnol who was also showcased in the local and American media as a corruption-buster, behaved like a law unto themselves. Calling Lula the “big boss” of a bribery scheme, Dallagnol declared just before the trial that the former president would be “charged with corruption”. He didn’t bother to present any evidence. During the trial, Dallagnol showed a slide which had a series of bubbles, containing words like “corrupt governance” and “illegal enrichment”, with arrows pointing towards a big circle in the middle called “Lula”. Based on such “evidence”, Moro declared Lula guilty on July 12, 2017.
The conviction shook up Brazil’s politics. Lula, who was leading the opinion polls at that time, was placed in a solitary prison cell in Curitiba and barred from election. After 580 days in jail, during which Bolsonaro won the presidency and Moro quit the court to become his justice minister, Lula was released on bail in 2019. Emerging from the prison, Lula promised to clear his name and to prove that Moro had persecuted him to prevent him from running in elections.
The mask slips and falls
When Judge Moro was conducting his show in Curitiba, all institutions of Brazil, including the higher courts and media, ate from his hands whatever he served. But his image suffered a bit when he joined Bolsonaro’s cabinet. Seen as a reward for helping Bolsonaro win the election, Moro survived the criticism as Bolsonaro presented him as the “super justice minister” who would rid the country of crime and corruption. In 2019, after TheIntercept Brasil exposed how Moro and the Curitiba prosecutors had colluded with each other against defendants, especially Lula, Moro became a toxic commodity.
Based on the explosive messages, procured and leaked by a group of Brazilian hackers, from a Telegram group which comprised the prosecutors and the judge, the exposé showed that Moro was actually leading them at every step of the trial. The prosecutors, revealed the messages, were also working with the certain government departments of the United States and Switzerland as they hounded Lula. In their secret chats, the judge and his prosecutors were determined to stop Lula from returning to power in 2018. Car Wash was not an investigation into a scandal, it was itself a scandal and Moro was its kingpin. In a landmark judgement on March 23, Brazil’s supreme court ruled that Moro was “partial” in Lula’s trial. “In this case what is discussed is something that for me is key: everyone has the right to a fair trial, due legal process, and the impartiality of the judge,” said Justice Carmen Lucia, casting the tie-breaking vote in favour of Lula.
Despite a strong reprimand from the country’s top court, the former judge and justice minister has refused to back off or apologise for his conduct. After the Supreme Court pronounced that he was not impartial in Lula’s trial, Moro said he was absolutely calm about his decisions. “Despite the decision of the Supreme Court, I have absolute tranquility in relation to the correctness of my decisions, all based on the judicial processes, including those which had the former President as accused,” said Moro, praising the Operation Car Wash as a “milestone in the fight against corruption in Brazil”.
Having quit the judicial service in 2018 and lost his job in Bolsonaro administration in 2020, Moro was reportedly considering to run for presidency on an anti-corruption plank. After the rap on the knuckles from the apex court, his political future too is in doubt. For now, he is sitting comfortably in the moneys-spinning world of consultancy, dividing his time between Sao Paulo and Miami.
Judge, jury and prosecutor
A few months after leaving Bolsonaro’s government, Sergio Moro announced in November 202o that he was joining the US consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal as a director. As this firm acts as a judicial administrator for Odebrecht, the company that was at the centre of Car Wash scandal, Moro’s career move reinforced the suspicions about his motives in persecuting Lula.
Though a lower court judge, Moro’s actions had a far-reaching impact on Brazil’s politics, economy and foreign policy. As Bolsonaro, who would not be president but for Moro’s conviction of Lula, runs Brazil to the ground, the former judge’s judicial conduct is being documented and discussed. And the picture that emerges is rather murky.
As a judge in Lula’s case, Moro committed several illegalities, says lawyer Marco Aurelio de Carvalho who coordinates Prerogatives, a group of progressive jurists and lawyers. “This judge, clandestinely and illegally, tapped the lawyers of Lula, violating their rights to defence,” said Carvalho in an interview with The Wire. Founder of the Association of Jurists for Democracy, Carvalho highlights another illegal action by Moro: in 2016, the judge tapped a phone conversation between then President Rousseff and Lula and leaked parts of it to the Globo TV, which broadcast it on their ‘national news’ show. Played repeatedly on television, the selective audio wrongly created an impression that Rousseff wanted to appoint Lula as her chief of staff to protect him from prosecution. “This had a direct impact on Lula, who was accused of obstructing justice, but also on the history of this country. It played an important role in the impeachment of Rousseff, an impeachment without a legal basis,” said Carvalho.
Moro’s conduct, as revealed in the Telegram chats, was that of a judge, jury and prosecutor. Carvalho says Moro had repeatedly ignored proof of innocence from Lula while considering the prosecution’s evidence which he had himself given to them. “This judge acted in an absolutely compromising way as a coordinator of the prosecution. He established a promiscuous relationship with the prosecutors and denied the right of defence,” said Carvalho.
Throughout the trial, Moro, says Carvalho, used the media to destroy Lula’s image. In 2016, the country was shocked as police officers knocked at Lula’s door early in the morning and took him away for interrogation. The former president was picked like a criminal in the full glare of television cameras. “At no time, Lula had refused to appear for questioning if he was summoned, but Moro’s objective was to discredit him in the face of public opinion,” said Carvalho. Even a Supreme Court judge, Justice Ricardo Lewandowski compared the action against Lula to the transportation of “animals to the slaughterhouse”.
But given Moro’s track record, his behaviour was not surprising. In a new documentary, Sergio Moro: The construction of a judge above the law by Luis Nassif, Marcelo Auler and Cintia Alves of the Youtube channel GGN, the journalists have shown that Moro had already been criticised in the past by Supreme Court judges for denying a “fair trial” and for having acted “as an investigator, performing the actions of the prosecution”. “The film documents Moro’s previous abuses, going back to the years in early 2000s. Many lawyers who had pleaded cases in front of him complained about him to the Supreme Court,” said Cintia Alves, speaking to The Wire.
Law is a political weapon
Despite his bad record as a judge, Moro became synonymous with Operation Car Wash as he appeared at black tie events in New York, openly hobnobbed with PSDB politicians inimical to Lula and was feted by the media – Brazilian and western – who took his words as gospel truth. When Lula and the PT protested their innocence, they were branded as a corrupt cabal which had taken Brazil down. With Dilma impeached, in 2016, Lula was convicted in 2017 and sent to prison in 2018. A political party, which had led the country’s growth and transformation, was turned into a villain in just a couple of years.
The main protagonist of the story was Moro who had become the darling of the elite – local and global – for pushing the PT and Lula to the sidelines with a legal process, something they had not been able to achieve politically.
Judicial experts see Moro’s scandalous conduct as “lawfare”. According to Gisele Cittadino, a professor of law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and author along with other jurists of the book Lawfare: The Calvary of Brazilian Democracy (2020), lawfare is the use of law for political persecution. “In Brazil, lawfare was widely used in Operation Car Wash, with three different targets. The first target was ex-President Lula da Silva, the second target was the political project as represented by the governments of the Workers’ Party and the third target was the national sovereignty. It managed to dismantle the oil and gas contractors and a good part of the shipping industry, the sectors of the Brazilian economy that had a strong international presence and were competing with the US companies,” said Cittadino, speaking to The Wire.
The practice of lawfare is present across Latin America. According to the professor, in Argentina, ex-president Cristina Kirchner was subjected to judicial persecution; Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, was forced to go into exile due to lawsuits; and the Bolivian justice tried to arrest ex-president Evo Morales. “What is common in these cases? All were left-wing governments, committed to policies aimed at the most disadvantaged. Lawfare seems to be the substitute for the military dictatorships, because in both the cases we are faced with an economic elite who refuse to include the poor in the policies. In the past, they resorted to the military. Now, they use the justice system,” said Cittadino.
The fall of Brazil
Since 2019, when Bolsonaro, the biggest beneficiary of Operation Car Wash, assumed presidency, the country has become a basket case of far-right politics, unbridled neoliberal economy and a skewed foreign policy that works against its own national interest. That probably was the objective of this investigation all along. In a breathtaking report published by the French newspaper Le Monde on April 10, it was revealed that it was the US strategy to “undermine Brazil’s geopolitical autonomy and weaken its companies that would be obstacles to American interests”. This strategy, said the report, began to be put together after Brazil found massive oil reserves in the ocean, the so-called pre-salt reserves, in 2006 when Lula was serving his first term.
At that time, the Brazilian foreign policy was strongly disapproved by Washington for not being subservient to its interests. At that time, Brazilian companies, such as Odebrecht and Camargo Correa, which would later be hit by Moro’s operation, were operating and growing in Latin America and Africa. According to Le Monde, the US embassy in Brazil started to create a group of local experts, sympathetic to their interests and willing to learn their methods which consist of making anti-corruption “working groups”, application of their legal doctrine and the “informal” sharing of information about the processes outside the official channels. This is exactly what happened with Operation Car Wash. In 2007, Sergio Moro had attended a meeting funded by the US Department of State where he met representatives from the FBI and the Department of Justice (DoJ). It has been revealed that the Curitiba prosecutors were working closely with the DoJ while they were persecuting Lula.
Former Brazilian president Lula de Silva was in Brasilia last week, meeting politicians from different parties and ambassadors of some countries. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert
While Moro and his prosecutors were hunting Lula, they were damaging Brazil. The full horror of the destruction they inflicted on the economy is coming out into the open only now. According to a study, released in March 2021, by the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies, the operation caused a damage of 174 billion reals ($34 billion), with more than 4.4 million jobs lost, and dozens of companies destroyed. On April 22, when Moro was pronounced “partial and incompetent” by the Supreme Court, Justice Lewandowski, bluntly stated that the Operation Car Wash dismantled many sectors of the national economy, such as the oil industry, in favour of foreign interests.
This damage to the economy, said Justice Lewandowski, was done in violation of rule of law. “Operation Car Wash’s modus operandi has led to forced deposition, lengthy arrests, threats to family members and other conducts incompatible with the rule of law,” said the Supreme Court judge. “Who facilitated the dismantling of the Brazilian economy? We have gone down from being the 8th economy in the world to the 14th.”
It is not just the economy which has spiralled downwards. In five years since the impeachment of Rousseff, Brazil has sunk on important parameters like democracy, media freedom, poverty, hunger, per capita income and life expectancy. On all socio-economic indicators, the country is in worse position than it was in 2016. And politically, it is back where it was in 2018. Amid the COVID-19 catastrophe, Bolsonaro’s hate-based populism is in sharp decline; Lula is again the country’s favourite politician and presidential candidate as he was three years ago when Moro’s lawfare against him blocked him and derailed Brazil.
But now, Brazil wants to correct its course. In two opinion major polls released on Wednesday, Lula was leading Bolsonaro by 41% to 23% in the first round of elections. If the two leaders went head-to-head in the second round, the Workers Party’s leader would win by 55% to Bolsonaro’s 32%. In the first survey since Lula regained his rights to contest an election, 54% of Brazilians said they would never vote for the current president. Such a high rejection rate for Bolsonaro is the result of his disastrous governance, deliberate mishandling of the pandemic and the daily wear-and-tear being caused to him by the inquiry at the Senate.
While passing by the Senate dome last Friday, Lula sent a clear message to Brazil with his “see you soon” tweet. That message has been received well by the country.
Shobhan Saxena and Florencia Costa are independent journalists based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The Brazilian democratic system has become so unbalanced that it has bifurcated, where any act or political omission can just as well rescue or sink it.
Once again, after so many other times, Brazil’s wealthy would rather run the risk of descending into dictatorship (if that’s not what they wanted to begin with) rather than have the lower classes express their aspiration to be included in the nation, which the wealthy have always conceived of as their own personal property.
Reading the transcript of Brazil’s April 22, 2020, council of ministers meeting is a painful, frightening and shocking experience. The fact that this video was made public and transcribed is an eloquent sign that democracy is still alive.
It happened as a result of former minister Sergio Moro’s accusation that the president tried to interfere with the Rio de Janeiro Federal Police investigation into one of his sons for serious criminal conduct. By ordering the release of the video, Celso de Mello, minister of the Federal Supreme Tribunal (STF), inscribed his name in the golden book of the brief and tortuous history of Brazilian democracy. Let’s hope that this promising sign he has given us has the potential to awaken democratic forces on the left and the right – a wake-up call from a deep and restless sleep composed of historical ignorance and myopic vanity, a sleep that lets them dream of electoral calculations without realising how frivolous that is when their own democracy is hanging by a thread.
The fascists don’t even hide their intentions. The president makes a direct and unequivocal call for armed conflict. More than a call, it means that he is ready to arm civilians outside of the armed forces. And he’s doing it with the generals by his side! He is confessing to a high crime and a crime against national security, and nothing happens. Next to the vice-president is seated the fearless and foolhardy Sergio Moro, then minister of justice, the man most responsible for the destruction of institutionalised democracy, who has always relied upon the complicity of the wealthy and their media. The president’s announcement is not only met with complacent smiles by those listening, but various ministers do their best to release gutterfuls of hate and prejudice, besides other malice aforethought.
What you are about to read is so dreadful that it has to be read to be believed:
President: “They’re always fucking trying to get to me, messing with my family. I already tried to change our security people officially and I couldn’t do it. This ends now. I’m not going to wait until they fuck with my family or my friends because I can’t replace someone from security at the end of the line – that belongs to our administration. They’re going to be replaced. And if they can’t be replaced, then replace their chief. And if you can’t replace their chief, then replace the minister. End of story… Minister of Justice and Minister of Defence, I want the people to arm themselves! To make sure that some son of a bitch doesn’t come along and impose another dictatorship! It’s so easy to impose a dictatorship! Some crappy mayor makes some crappy decree, and everyone is locked up at home. If they were armed, they’d be out on the street. And if I were a dictator, huh? I would want to disarm the populace, as they all did in the past whenever they wanted before imposing their respective dictatorship. So what do we do, I ask Fernando and Moro to please sign this shit today so I can send a big fucking message! Why am I arming the people? Because I don’t want a dictatorship! It can’t go on anymore. Right? It can’t go on anymore.”
Minister of Education (Extreme Right): “Me, I was putting all these deadbeats in jail. Starting with the STF. And this is what kills me… We’re talking to the people we have to fight. We’re not being tough or against privileges enough, at the State level and that’s … I am really just here wide open, like you all know, and I get shot down … hate … I hate the communist pity party. They’re trying to turn the people into a colony. This country is not … I hate the term ‘indigenous peoples,’ I hate that term. Hate it. The ‘gypsy people’. There is only one people in this country. Take it or leave it. It’s the Brazilian people, there is only one people.”
Minister of the Environment (Macchiavelian Moment): “Because everything we do is just fodder for the judiciary a day later. So that’s why we need to join forces here at this time when it’s quiet in the media because they’re only talking about Covid, and run past the herd and change all the regulations and ease laws … Now is the time to join forces and ease regulations.”
Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights (Reactionary Evangelicism): “Now during the pandemic we’re seeing the clowns at the STF putting abortion again on the agenda, and then the question of … women who got zika virus are going to get abortions and now the coronavirus? So they want everybody who gets coronavirus to be able to get an abortion in Brazil? Legalize it for everyone? (to the Minister of Health) Your ministry, Minister, is full of feminists with a single agenda which is legalizing abortion … Because we received word that there would be criminal infection in Roraima and Amazônia on purpose in Indians, to wipe out villages and entire peoples and blame it on the president.”
Minister of the Economy (Vanity Fair): “I understand this completely, in detail, not just from hearing about it. From reading eight books about each of those reconstructions (Germany, Chile). Then I read Keynes, it’s … three times in the original before I got to Chicago. So for me, it’s not music, it’s not dogma, it’s not bla-bla-bla.”
None of this is new. As for what the president said, one only has to look back to after the 1932 elections when Hitler expressed the same thing, invoking the need for dictatorship in order to protect democracy from dictatorship. The meeting took place on the day Brazil was approaching 3,000 deaths due to the coronavirus. This was not mentioned, however. Or, even more perversely, the intent is to use the media’s preoccupation with the pandemic to advance the loss of rights, the casinos, the privatisation, the dismantling of the Amazon and the elimination of environmental restrictions. The Brazilian democratic system has become so unbalanced that it has bifurcated, where any act or political omission can just as well rescue or sink it.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has approved an investigation into whether President Bolsonaro meddled with federal police to protect allies. The results could trigger a dramatic chain of events that hinge largely on one person.
As world leaders focus on fighting the coronavirus pandemic in their countries, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro faces another major battle — potentially his biggest political crisis since taking office.
The Supreme Court on Monday authorized an investigation of claims that Bolsonaro interfered with federal law enforcement. Former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, a highly popular politician, made the bombshell accusation during his resignation speech Friday, the same day Bolsonaro announced he had fired the federal police chief.
“I told the president that [changing the police chief] would be political interference. He said that it would be, too,” Moro said.
Moro alleges that Bolsonaro wanted to replace the police head with someone who would give him access to information and reports and would shield his relatives and allies from investigations.
Federal police are currently investigating Bolsonaro’s son Carlos for allegedly having organized a fake news scheme, according to major newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
On Tuesday the president tried to name a family friend to head the police, but a Supreme Court justice halted the nomination the next day.
From investigation to charges to trial?
Authorities will now look into whether Bolsonaro obstructed justice and meddled with federal police work, among other crimes.
Meanwhile, if Moro doesn’t show proof of Bolsonaro’s alleged interference, he could be charged for making a false accusation. He could also be charged for not doing his obligation as justice minister and failing to report Bolsonaro’s possible crimes when he knew about them.
A key figure in the proceedings is Augusto Aras, the attorney general. According to the Brazilian Constitution, the attorney general is the only person who can press charges against the president for a common crime, which under Brazilian law doesn’t require either legal party to have any specific characteristics. In contrast, a crime of responsibility requires the alleged perpetrator to be a public official.
If after the investigation Aras does press common crime charges, approval by two thirds of the lower house of Congress — at least 342 of the 513 deputies — would be needed to open a criminal trial before the Supreme Court. Without approval, the issue would be archived.
In a Supreme Court trial, Bolsonaro would become the defendant and would have to give up office for 180 days.
However, Bolsonaro could also be charged with a crime of responsibility, the Brazilian equivalent of high crimes and misdemeanors associated with the presidential office. Any Brazilian citizen can accuse the president of this crime. If the lower house accepts an accusation and a two-thirds majority votes to pass it on, Bolsonaro would face impeachment proceedings in the Senate.
Aras, whom Bolsonaro nominated in September 2019, has been criticized for siding too much with the president. He refused to break with the government when Bolsonaro supported protests against social distancing measures during the coronavirus pandemic, when government measures threatened indigenous communities’ rights and when decrees made it easier to buy guns and ammunition.
Read more: Brazilian President Bolsonaro sides with anti-democracy protesters
Aras asked the Supreme Court to greenlight investigations into both Bolsonaro and Moro the same day the latter made the meddling accusations. However, Rubens Glezer, a law professor with the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, said the attorney general was “ambiguous” and left enough leeway to maneuver depending on how the case develops.
“If [after the investigation] things look bad for Bolsonaro, Aras can say he did his part and no one can accuse him of having stayed silent,” Glezer said. “If Bolsonaro continues stable and the investigation turns against Moro, [Aras] can show that he was a ‘good soldier’ [to the government] and pave his way to a vacancy on the Supreme Court.”
Deputies’ decision uncertain
If Aras presses charges against Bolsonaro, the political context and the level of support for the government will determine the reaction of the lower house.
Maria Paula Dallari Bucci, a law professor at the University of São Paulo, is uncertain that two thirds of the deputies would want to open a criminal trial against Bolsonaro.
“According to the data that we have, the lower house will only be convinced if there is definitive proof,” she said.
She added that some parties are looking into starting a parliamentary inquiry committee, which would run parallel to the criminal investigation. It would also look into Moro’s allegations and could change the deputies’ opinions. Such a committee was started in the case of Fernando Collor, a former president who resigned in 1992 during an impeachment trial that eventually found him guilty of corruption.
“A committee was installed and information, and details were disclosed that made it clearer to the public opinion that the president was incapable of continuing his mandate,” Bucci said.
If Aras presses charges against Bolsonaro, the president’s only chance to save himself would be to block the process in the lower house, according to Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, a constitutional law professor at University of Brasilia. If the case were to reach the Supreme Court, he believes the justices would side against the president unanimously.
“Bolsonaro is so explicit in his madness from an institutional point of view that, in the Supreme Court, both sides would unite against him,” Benvindo said.
This article was originally published on DW. Read here.
The journalist’s investigations cast doubts on the impartiality of former judge Sérgio Moro in corruption investigation, ‘Operation Car Wash’, that led to jailing of several figures, including former president Lula.
New Delhi: Brazilian prosecutors have charged US journalist Glenn Greenwald with being part of a “criminal organisation” that allegedly hacked into phones – and which orchestrated the leak of a trove of electronic messages showing the partisan role of an anti-corruption task force.
The prosecutors went ahead with the charges against Greenwald despite a Supreme Court order barring federal police from investigating the journalist’s role in dissemination of the hacked messages.
Greenwald, who is based in Brazil, is particularly well-known for his reporting of documents describing surveillance programmes of the US’s National Security Agency, which had been leaked by former contractor, Edward Snowden.
The articles, published by Intercept Brasil last year, cast doubts on the impartiality of former judge Sérgio Moro and other prosecutors involved in corruption investigation, ‘Operation Car Wash’, that led to jailing of several important figures, including former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
All my solidarity to journalist @ggreenwald who was a victim of another blatant abuse of authority against freedom of press and democracy.
Lula’s conviction led to the rise and election of Jair Bolsonaro, who subsequently made Moro his minister of justice.
At the time of publishing the articles, Intercept had said that the stories were based on archives of “audio recordings, videos, photos, court proceedings, and other documentation” provided by an anonymous source.
“They reveal serious wrongdoing, unethical behaviour, and systematic deceit about which the public, both in Brazil and internationally, has the right to know,” TheIntercept had said on June 10, 2019.
According to BBC, while the federal public prosecutors have proposed the charges, a judge has to still decide whether to formally indict him or not.
Associated Press noted in its report that Supreme Court’s order last year that “constitutional secrecy” around sources used in journalism had so far prevented the government from taking “coercive measures against Greenwald”.
“Because of that, a judge would have to authorise any attempt by prosecutors to formally investigate the journalist or bring charges. Judge Ricardo Leite will analyse the unusual accusation against Greenwald and the group of six alleged hackers. There is no deadline for a decision,” AP reported.
Besides Greenwald, six other individuals have also been accused of illegal telephone interceptions and conspiracy, among other related crimes.
Prosecutors claim that Greenwald played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime”. They citied alleged intercepted messages that showed Greenwald reportedly encouraging hackers to delete archives shared with the media group, reported The New York Times. They also stated that Greenwald was communicating with the hackers, while they were actively monitoring private chats on the messaging app Telegram.
In a statement released through Intercept, Greenwald described the charges as “an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister Moro and the Bolsonaro government”. He pointed out that the charges were brought by the same prosecutor, Wellington Divino Marques de Oliveira, who tried to criminally prosecute the head of the Brazilian Bar Association for criticising Moro.
“We will not be intimidated by these tyrannical attempts to silence journalists,” Greenwald added.
Note from Glenn Greenwald about the grave attack on a free press by the Bolsonaro government — in obvious retaliation for the exposés we’ve been publishing since June revealing grave revelation by his Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro: pic.twitter.com/IBxrj5baHB
The Intercept pointed out that that evidence cited by the Brazilian Public Ministry is the “same that was rigorously analysed by the country’s Federal Police, leading the agency to conclude that Greenwald did not commit any crimes in his contacts with the alleged source of our Secret Brazil Archive stories”.
“Glenn Greenwald was not formally investigated by the Federal Police, but they concluded that there was no indication of wrongdoing committed by him,” the statement said.
Following the publication of the reports, Bolsonaro had asserted publicly in July 2018 that Greenwald “might wind up in jail”.
According to Washington Post, Greenwald’s case “is seen as a test for freedom of journalists under Bolsonaro, a right-wing former military officer elected last year while appealing to nationalism, homophobia, nostalgia for Brazil’s previous military dictatorship and attacking the media.”
As per Times, Greenwald said that he had been methodical in his dealings with the source who gave him the leaked chats, mindful of the lessons he had learned in the Snowden case. “The one thing I could not do is give direction,” Greenwald said.
“That’s crossing a line. I was very careful.”
Along with Lula, Snowden too tweeted against the charges against Greenwald.
Absolute red alert: This is unbelievably naked retaliation for revealing extreme corruption at the highest levels of #Bolsonaro‘s administration, and an existential threat to investigative journalism in #Brazil. https://t.co/qo6v0XjgyZ
Several US lawmakers have also expressed deep concern about the Brazilian prosecutors’ intention to bring charges against Greenwald.
The US civil society group, ACLU said that US government must “immediately condemn this outrageous assault on the freedom of the press, and recognise that its attacks on press freedoms at home have consequences for American journalists doing their jobs abroad, like Glenn Greenwald”.
Our government must immediately condemn this outrageous assault on the freedom of the press, and recognize that its attacks on press freedoms at home have consequences for American journalists doing their jobs abroad, like Glenn Greenwald. https://t.co/fHycUBq3Dq
The San Francisco-based Freedom of the Press foundation called on the Brazilian government to halt the prosecution and respect press freedom, as the Brazilian Supreme Court has already ordered them to do. “In the meantime, we dearly hope Glenn is safe and is able to continue doing his job as a journalist,” the statement said.
Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, who is also a lawmaker, welcomed the charges with a sarcastic tweet.
Glenn Greenwald sempre disse que adorava o Brasil e queria conhecer o país a fundo.
Quem sabe agora vai conhecer até a cadeia… talvez jogar futebol com o Freixo…https://t.co/bpuNFMDRPr
Lula, who served as president from 2003 to 2010 and left office with high approval ratings, is ineligible to stand for office until 2025 under Brazil’s “Clean Record” law because of his convictions.
Former Brazilian President Lula, who was released from jail on Friday, has told supporters that he can beat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. Bolsonaro described his leftist opponent as a “scoundrel.”
Brazil’s former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed on Saturday to challenge far-right President Jair Bolsonaro for impoverishing working Brazilians. Lula was released from jail on Friday after being imprisoned on a corruption conviction.
“I want to tell them I’m back,” the 74-year-old, speaking outside the metalworkers’ union where he got his political start, told hundreds of supporters dressed in red — the colour of Lula’s Workers’ Party.
“Do not give ammunition to the scoundrel, who is momentarily free but full of guilt,” he added.
Could Lula become president again?
Lula, who served as president from 2003 to 2010 and left office with high approval ratings, is ineligible to stand for office until 2025 under Brazil’s “Clean Record” law because of his convictions. He was freed from prison after Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a person can only be jailed once they have exhausted the appeals process.
The former president’s release from prison has garnered widespread praise from left-wing politicians around the world, including the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, as well as US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.
As President, Lula has done more than anyone to lower poverty in Brazil and to stand up for workers. I am delighted that he has been released from jail, something that never should have happened in the first place. https://t.co/UNZZqjjMVF
Lula has maintained his innocence throughout his time in jail. On Saturday, Brazilian Justice Minister Sergio Moro also described Lula as a “criminal” after the former president criticized him in his speech.
“I’m not responding to a criminal, jailed or freed. Some people deserve to be ignored,” Moro wrote on Twitter.
This article was originally published inDW. You can read ithere.
The film highlights the fast spiral down which Brazil went after a few good years of hope and economic wellbeing.
The documentary film The Edge of Democracy on Netflix is the Brazilian story of the end of military dictatorship in 1985, the climax of democratic maturity with the election of lathe worker Lula as president, the fall of democracy with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff through legislative coup in 2016 and the imprisonment of Lula to prevent him from contesting in the elections by a judicial coup in 2018.
It is a poignant and powerful narrative which starts with the people’s celebration of the rebirth of democracy in 1985 and ends with Jair Bolsonaro celebrating the past military dictatorship.
For those of us who followed with admiration Brazil’s rise in the first decade of this century and were saddened with its quick fall in the second decade, the film is just a visual summary of the facts. The fall of the admirable Lula and the rise of despicable Bolsonaro is a horror story.
The film highlights the fact that this would not have happened but for the political incompetence of Rousseff, who did not know how to handle the Congress and its crooked leaders like Eduardo Cunha and Michel Temer.
Cunha was against impeachment in the beginning, as seen in his statement. But when Rousseff refused to rescue him after he was caught red-handed with Swiss bank accounts, he took up impeachment as a revenge ploy. No Brazilian president can get bills passed in the fractious Congress of over 20 political parties without appeasing Congressional leaders overtly or covertly.
Brazil’s former president Dilma Rousseff in 2015. Photo: Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino
This is exactly why President Lula had to set up Mensalão scheme in which monthly payments were made to members of the Congress to consider and pass bills. But Rousseff was politically aloof and indifferent.
The film shows a Congressman complaining that she would not even take part in the traditional Brazilian “hugging of colleagues”. Rousseff grew opinionated and arrogant while at the same time remaining naïve and let herself be played by the veterans of these political games.
Rousseff should have, of course, resigned on her own, admitting moral responsibility for the massive and systematic corruption in Petrobras, which went on even when she was the minister of energy. The Workers Party and Lula, who were carried away by hubris, certainly deserved an electoral defeat but not an overthrow by a constitutional coup.
Sergio Moro, the inquisitorial judge and prosecutor had gone out of his way in the witch hunt against Lula by using even illegal and unethical methods to frame him. He abused his judicial authority by sentencing Lula to disproportionately long spells of imprisonment even when there was no solid evidence.
Moro also used every trick in the book to prevent Lula from contesting the elections and to damage the image of the Leftist Workers Party. Lula would have won the elections against Bolsonaro without doubt, but Moro had created a vacuum by keeping him out of the elections and this helped in the election of Bolsonaro, who has rewarded him with ministership. The illegal methods used by Moro has come out in recently leaked phone conversations between him and others.
Brazil had been emerging as a regional and global power around 2010 under Lula’s visionary leadership. His inclusive policies emancipated millions from poverty and injustice. Lula’s pragmatic and balanced mix of pro-poor and business-friendly policies became the role model for Latin America and acted as an alternative to the Washington Consensus, which had ruined the region in the eighties.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during a rally in Curitiba, Brazil, March 28, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Rodolfo Buhrer/Files
The only thing missing from the film is the role of the US which targeted Lula and Brazil to contain the rise of the Left in the region. The US is believed to have played a role with its espionage, including inside Petrobras and in the office of Rousseff. There is speculation about a possible link between US agencies and the US-trained Sergio Moro who had imported the US system of plea bargaining to implicate Lula.
The Petrobras corruption was an institutional one shared by all the political parties and leaders. But Moro and company focused only on Lula. When others, including Temer, were implicated with solid evidence, the Congress and judiciary moved to save him and stop further investigations. When Cunha threatened to spill the beans against Temer, he too was jailed.
The director of the film, Petra Costa, has given a personal touch by weaving the story of her own family with that of the country. She has narrated the story in the first person. Her grandfather was a founder of the construction firm Andrade Gutierrez, which was one of the contractors involved in the building of Brasilia city. It flourished during the military dictatorship as well as during the Workers Party rule.
It was also one of those firms disgraced for corruption in the ‘car wash scandals’. But Petra’s parents went the other way and became Leftist revolutionaries fighting for democracy and justice. Her parents suffered imprisonment and exile. Her mother was put in the same jail where Rousseff was also imprisoned.
Petra was born in 1983 at the time of transition from dictatorship to democracy. One of her earliest memories was sitting on the shoulders of her mother watching a sea of people protesting for the end of military dictatorship. She grew up in a vibrant democracy which matured and flourished. Costa recalls her mother’s first impression of Lula as “the embodiment of all she had longed for: workers becoming political actors, opening the way towards a democratic path.
Jair Bolsonaro, once a far-right lawmaker is now the unpopular president of Brazil. Photo: Reuters/Ricardo Moraes
“She thought a New Brazil was born with her. But her hope turned to disillusionment thanks to the derailment of democracy in 2016 by the corrupt Congress leaders and the crooked judiciary. She cynically says, “Our country is a republic of families; some controlling land, others controlling media, some others banks, sand, rock and mines. These families sometimes get tired of democracy”.
One should see Edge of Democracy just as a short film about the “Big Brazil” in its passing phase when it actually moved towards a promising future. Even more mature and established democracies such as the US have suffered damage, as it is suffering now with Donald Trump, a much worse monster than Bolsonaro.
One should see the larger picture of the long term potential of Brazil, beyond Bolsonaro. Petra Costa says in her narration, “Our democracy was built on forgetting.”
Bolsonaro will be yet another forgettable phase of Brazil’s history.
What next for Brazil? The film has not given any clues. But my take is that Brazil has come out of bigger crises in the past.
R. Viswanathan is a Latin America expert and former ambassador to Latin American countries.
Leaked private messages showed that the judge who convicted him was not impartial.
Brasilia/Sao Paolo:Brazil‘s Supreme Court on Tuesday delayed until August its decision on an appeal by imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who argued he should be freed because leaked private messages showed that the judge who convicted him was not impartial.
Five judges on the 11-member court heard the appeal. After rejecting in a 3-to-2 vote a proposal by one justice that Lula be freed until they have more time to evaluate the appeal, the justices decided to delay a decision until August, after a judicial recess.
The leftist Lula was Brazil‘s leader from 2003-2010 and left office with an 87% approval rating. But the Workers Party he founded fell hard when Brazilian prosecutors in 2014 began the “Car Wash” corruption investigation and others. They are unprecedented probes into graft, centered on political kickbacks on contracts at state-run firms.
Lula was convicted in July 2017 in the first of at least eight corruption trials he faces. He was jailed in April 2018 with a 12-year sentence and remains in prison. He has since been convicted in a second graft trial.
The first conviction blocked Lula, a leftist icon who remains one of Brazil‘s most influential politicians, from running for the presidency last year. Even after he was jailed, polls showed he would have easily been elected over far-right rival Jair Bolsonaro, who won the presidency.
The judge who convicted Lula, Sergio Moro, now serves as Bolsonaro’s justice minister.
In recent weeks, he has come under pressure to resign after The Intercept Brasil news website published the first of what it said will be months of stories based on leaked private messages between Moro and prosecutors.
Those messages raise serious doubts about Moro’s impartiality as he presided over Lula‘s trial. The messages showed him coaching prosecutors on the timing of raids and arrests, asking them to publish press releases to criticise Lula‘s defence and sending investigative tips while he was legally obliged to remain impartial.
Based on the messages, Lula‘s lawyer Cristiano Zanin argued before the Supreme Court justices on Tuesday that Lula must be freed at once.
“Today we know that the defence was treated as a mere formality,” Zanin said, referring to Moro’s assistance given to federal prosecutors. “From the beginning of the trial, the prosecution was given favorable treatment.”
In court filings, Zanin said The Intercept‘s reporting “reveal in complete and frightening detail” that Moro breached ethics to convict Lula and keep him from regaining the presidency.
Moro at first said the leaked messages showed no wrongdoing. As The Intercept published more stories, he changed tactics to say he could not verify if the notes were authentic and that he could not recall whether he had sent them.
Lula‘s lawyers have for years maintained that Moro was acting out of a desire to block Lula and the Workers Party from returning to the presidency. They have repeatedly appealed to the Supreme Court, but all requests have been denied.
