Alarming movements in Brazil

The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, this May during a ceremony in Brasilia. ADRIANO MACHADO (REUTERS)

When a head of state undertakes frontally against the Judiciary, it is usually because something big is going against the independence of justice.

It has been happening in Europe: in Hungary and, especially, in Poland in the last five years.

As the war against Ukraine draws all the attention, justice remains under sustained attack in both European countries.

This “black tide” arrives —when not!— in our region.

The closest blows in time are in Central America and I have already referred to this in this newspaper.

I have referred to this problem in these pages.

For example, about El Salvador with President Nayib Bukele's attack on judicial independence and the arbitrary dismissal of the Constitutional Court and the Attorney General (

and

).

In Guatemala, for its part, within a framework of systematic attacks and threats against judges and prosecutors investigating corruption cases, several judges and prosecutors have had to leave their country.

Judge Erika Aifán, acting in several "heavy" anti-corruption cases, has been forced to resign and go into exile in the US.

In the largest and most populous country in the region—Brazil—the government seems not to want to be left behind in undermining judicial independence.

It simultaneously threatens the function of the Federal Supreme Court (Supreme Court) and, along the way, none other than the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), a fundamental institution for guaranteeing the transparency of the vote in the October presidential elections.

Two worrisome facts, concatenated, have generated the protest of the Brazilian democratic community, in general, and the legal community, in particular.

First, the express presidential pardon, after the criminal conviction of an official federal deputy, Daniel Silveira, accused by the Attorney General and later convicted by the STF, on recent April 21, for serious crimes.

The sentence to eight years and nine months in prison was for the systematic attacks, including threats of violence, against the free exercise of the judicial function and some of its magistrates.

In this process, and in what was expressed particularly by Judge Alexandre de Moraes in his opinion, there were “serious threats to justice and its members” perpetrated by Silveira.

That sentence against Silveira had not finished on April 21 and a few hours later, President Jair Bolsonaro issued a presidential decree pardoning the deputy convicted by the courts.

Decree that, according to the analyzes of the overwhelming majority of independent Brazilian jurists consulted —which describes this presidential decree as “usurpation of functions”— exceeds presidential powers.

This is because it is based on a provision of the old Criminal Procedure Code of 1941 left without effect by the Criminal Enforcement Code of 1984.

Second, the subsequent attack by President Bolsonaro against the STF and, in particular, against its magistrate, de Moraes, whose vote had been relevant in Silveira's conviction.

But not only that: de Moraes is nothing less than the rapporteur in the Supreme Court in the case that is aired there against President Bolsonaro for the systematic attacks through social networks against the Brazilian electoral system.

There it is, perhaps, the "mother of the lamb" according to various analysts I have consulted: the presidential elections in October.

Bolsonaro has now undertaken it with everything.

Not by chance, against Moraes, an independent magistrate who is currently nothing less than vice president of the highest electoral court (TSF).

He has been a speaker in high-profile investigations, such as the fake news investigation and the investigations against President Bolsonaro about the president's possible interference to benefit relatives and political allies.

The vilified —by Bolsonaro— Moraes is also a rapporteur for investigation 4,878, which investigates the leak of a secret investigation by the Federal Police into the hacker attack suffered by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in 2018. The TSE ministers, among they Moraes, asked that Bolsonaro,

It was also Alexandre de Moraes who authorized the opening of the investigation into Bolsonaro for associating Covid-19 vaccines with an alleged risk of developing AIDS.

The false information was spread by the president in a live broadcast on social networks on October 22, 2021.

Isolated movements?

Well, no, for the bulk of independent analysts and jurists, we are facing fundamental pieces of a strategy to delegitimize the judicial and judicial-electoral system and results that could be adverse to Bolsonaro in October.

Along the way, symptomatically, electronic voting, which has served with efficiency and transparency in Brazil for 30 years, also appears to be questioned by the Head of State.

The protection and guarantee of judicial independence appears today as a matter of particular attention and priority in Brazil and for its democratic development threatened.

Knowing the repeated presidential signs of curing his health, anticipating to question electoral results that could be unfavorable in October, justice is particularly threatened.

Current risk that confirms the thesis that one of the most lacerating signs when democracy is at risk and under attack is the questioning and attack on judicial independence and the function of its most outstanding magistrates.

On the contrary, in the face of a threatened democracy, defending judicial independence is a national priority and demand that concerns the country, the international community and goes far beyond, consequently, those who hold the judiciary.

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