Brazil has lived for several years under the blackmail of a farce: with the pretext of combating corruption, its democracy has been destroyed, the State of law demoralized, the prestige of Judicial Power wiped out; a hard blow has been delivered to the economy and the political destiny of the country has been altered. This farce was denounced all these years by Lula–the principal victim of this operation–, by the left, by democratic forces, without the Judicial function having done anything to curtail the arbitrary managing of the so-called operation Lava Jato (Carwash investigation).

Now, the denunciations of the scandalous conversations between the agents of Lava Jato, that include members of the Superior Court of Justice (STF), the media, parliamentarians of the right and the United States, brutally reveal the whole plot set up to persecute the PT and Lula and to block the people’s will for him to return to preside over the country.

The second package of denunciations reveals, on the one hand, the direct engagement of a member of the STF, who behaves like a political activist of a right wing project, subjecting this maximum instance of Judicial Power to judge Sergio Moro, as well as subordinating the whole Lava Jato operation to US authorities, which they said they had to consult.

Although all that has been revealed only goes to confirm what has been systematically denounced, one part of public opinion expresses astonishment in the face of the revelations, another part takes the opportunity to change position, after having enthusiastically adhered to Lava Jato and made Sergio Moro into a national hero. The STF itself has repeatedly rejected–the last time just a few weeks ago–all the denunciations made by Lula’s defence about Sergio Moro’s biased character as judge of Lula. The concrete political positions of this judge, his direct ties with the PSDB party, the condemnation of Lula without proof, his political persecution of the PT, have not been enough to declare his absolute lack of impartiality.

In various circumstances, Moro has acted as the political chief of a faction of Judicial Power to prevent Lula’s freedom, failing to recognize decisions of superior legal bodies; moreover, he has influenced judges to put obstacles or prohibition for Lula to attend the funerals of relatives or friends, as well as not allowing him to give interviews.  All this indicates that there was a close coordination among all the members of the Lava Jato investigation, violating all the legal standards of impartiality that judges should respect.

Once these conversations were revealed, the first reaction of Moro has been to say that he did nothing illegal, implicitly recognizing the truthfulness what was revealed. When the overall public reaction indicated that he had committed grave violations of the law, the right closed ranks to shift the debate to the illegal character of the tapping and interception of conversations. When he realized that a great quantity of internal information of the operation Lava Jato investigation was in the hands of a media outlet (The Intercept), Moro declared that his cell phone had been hacked, as if he were preparing a justification based on the supposedly illegal form of obtaining all the information.

After the media had widely broadcast the information, Globo was directly accused by the journalist Glen Greenwald, who directs The Intercept in Brazil, of having direct participation in operation Lava Jato. This media corporation then moved to disqualify that alternative press outlet, launching hard attacks against the journalist, outlining the supposedly illegal character of how the information was obtained and pointing out that the material could have been falsified.

The country is still on tenterhooks, awaiting new exposures, given that those who have the material – in addition to sending a copy of everything to the exterior – have announced new revelations.

13/06/2019

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Emir Sader, Brazilian Sociologist and Political Scientist, is the coordinator of the Laboratory of Public Policies with the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)