Do you want to receive the texts from this column first in your email? Subscribe to the Pública Newsletter, sent every Friday at 8 a.m. To receive the upcoming editions, sign up here.
I haven't had many deep discussions about politics, Brazil, and the future with the people around me since the campaign started. With so much noise, it seems impossible to have a serious conversation, with attention taken by the complicated plot of the STF crisis, which also occupies the electoral arena, in a bombardment of news, details, and opinions.
It took me a while to understand when a friend said that the campaign was "boring," the exact opposite of what I feel, immersed in the daily work as a journalist that has never seemed more challenging – nor more urgent. But listening to other people, equally informed and politically engaged, who are unwilling to engage in this election, I understood how the grotesque spectacle at the STF and the electoral exploitation of the crisis drive voters away from this sea of mud. It is not motivating to follow indecorous dialogues, nor authorities who seem driven by an unjustifiable greed from those who earn more than 99% of the Brazilian population, and have enormous power, which should at least be reciprocated with responsibility and commitment to the Constitution.
And if Alexandre de Moraes has much to explain about his relations with Vorcaro, involving more than 50 compromising messages – including on the day he was arrested by the Federal Police – and against the backdrop of a 130 million contract with his wife's office, he is not the only minister contributing to the demoralization of the judiciary, essential to the democratic regime.
In February, a deal made behind closed doors by the Court, presided over by the same minister Edson Fachin, allowed minister Dias Tóffoli to step down from the reporting of the Master Case, maintaining his robe and immunity with a declaration of "personal support" and "non-existence of suspicion or impediment" in a public note signed by the ten ministers of the STF. This came after he exchanged messages with the fraudulent banker, with whom he was a partner at the Tayayá resort, as revealed a month earlier by the press.
There are also suspicions surrounding minister André Mendonça, as I anticipated in the previous column, regarding the political use of the inquiries under his reporting – the INSS, Dark Horse, and Master cases. Selective leaks impacting President Lula's electorate – the "Lulinha" case, erroneously and intentionally mixed with fraud against retirees – made headlines at the beginning of the campaign. Meanwhile, the Dark Horse case, revealed by Intercept in May, with audios of Flávio Bolsonaro asking for money from Daniel Vorcaro, remained locked on Mendonça's desk.
To this day, Flávio has not even testified in the inquiry that also investigates the real destination of the funds sent through a fund based in the United States and managed by Eduardo Bolsonaro's lawyer, who since his father's defeat, Jair, has lobbied for the Trump administration's interference in Brazilian sovereignty. It is also unknown how much public money (beyond that stolen by Vorcaro from the pensions of civil servants from various states) was consumed by the venture, as shown by the investigation by the Federal Police at the request of minister Flávio Dino about the possible diversion of 2 million reais from parliamentary amendments to NGOs linked to the film's producers, which has already resulted in police searches at the home of Mário Frias, former Minister of Culture under Jair Bolsonaro.
Equally suspicious was the timing chosen by Mendonça, also a former minister of Jair Bolsonaro, to ignite the STF. The Federal Police report on Moraes, with mentions to Paulo Gonet (PGR) and Andrei Rodrigues (PF), was hastily commissioned 35 days before the elections; and leaked and then released to the press a week before September 7, when Mendonça became a “martyr” for Jair's religious voters (who were also distant from the campaign), with his figure exalted in puppets and posters at Flávio Bolsonaro's demonstration on Avenida Paulista.
As a citizen and as a journalist, I believe that all public interest secrets must be revealed in their entirety and all suspects investigated. The danger lies precisely in partial and interested leaks that lead to distortions of information and legal processes with impacts of all kinds, making even the investigations themselves unfeasible, as happened in the Lava Jato case. But I do not forget the obvious: so far, Flávio Bolsonaro is the only presidential candidate who asked for and received money from Vorcaro.
It is hard to believe that minister Edson Fachin, who has shown so little appetite for justice in the Toffoli case and is slow to react now, will have the will and energy necessary to face the suspicions weighing on the court – from A to Z. Two conditions are essential for the population to believe that there is at least the intention to get the STF back on track: that the extraordinary session scheduled for the 15th in the plenary to clarify the allegations involving the Master Case be public; and that the material about the case be released in its entirety to avoid selective leaks.
As for us, voters, it may be worth doing an exercise of detachment, since the quarrels of the powerful often exclude us, also weighing the political projects of the candidates at the risk of awakening in a dictatorship like that of El Salvador. Which is being sold as a project for Brazil by several candidates, despite Bukele's regime keeping 1 in every 50 citizens in jail, without processes or legal guarantees, and a country in the dark, with the expulsion of journalists and the free press, as reported by the multi-award-winning and exiled journalist, Carlos Dada, during a recent visit to Brazil.
I hope we can shake off the splashes of this sea of mud and support politicians who prioritize dialogue to build alternatives for a future threatened by wars, dictatorships, injustices, and by the very imbalance of the planet. And that they are capable of deepening the debate and defending our rights, including the right to access public interest information and justice, judging and punishing those who have deviated from it. Always preserving our achievements, such as the trial and imprisonment of the coup plotters and Vorcaro himself, as well as the legitimacy and security of our elections.
Unlike those who have the duty to uphold the Constitution, which cost so many lives for the redemocratization of the country to be built as a consensus and democratic foundation, perhaps it is time for us to reaffirm the sole paragraph of the article that opens the Magna Carta: "All power emanates from the people, who exercise it through elected representatives or directly, in accordance with this Constitution."
Participe da conversa