Photo: Mídia NINJA
I would like apologize to our readers for my terrible failures as an analyst.
Contaminated by a fierce optimism, I believed that we would defeat the coup. How many times did I write that the impeachment was dead and buried? Like most people, I neither knew nor could I imagine the level of degradation in our Chamber of Deputies.
It is also true that the forecasts were very close and that only in the final stretch did the game has turn their way, with obscure maneuvers that the Minister of Justice has already ordered to be investigated, according to which businessmen lent their jet planes to take deputies to Brasília to vote for the impeachment.
Who would imagine this almost personal commitment by FIESP’s large industrialists in favor of the coup?
And they all easily accepted the shame of watching the impeachment process being led by Eduardo Cunha.
In fact, the only way this process could go forward was to be led by Cunha, because only he is so deprived of scruples as to trample so many rites and display such arbitrariness. In this sense the accusations against him worked for the coup, since they left him on edge, desperate, ready for anything and everything, having nothing else to lose.
In the Senate perspectives are pessimistic. The impeachment commission should be established this
Monday and from this date on it will have 10 working days to analyze the case, adopt a position, and take the proposal to the plenary.
At this moment all scenarios lead to the Government’s defeat.
Last week I was in Brasília and spoke with the aides of various senators, including one who will part of the impeachment commission.
He told me that many senators are uneasy, because they know there has no crime of responsibility, but they do not know how to face ‘public opinion,’ i.e. the media.
They think that since none of the manifestations against the coup have been transmitted by Globo TV, they have no effect. The same thing applies to the numerous editorials and news reports published by the international press.
On the other hand, the Government has no voice in the media, and whenever it has, makes sure that it is wasted, as Dilma did on her speech at the UN.
Dilma’s administration has adopted a binary posture. It never sees the middle ground. At the interview she gave to myself and another eight bloggers last week, I asked why she had not denounced the concentration of the Brazilian media. Dilma began well, mentioning the oligopolies, but then said that there was no chance that a new regulation bill would pass in the Chamber of Deputies.
Well, that was not the question. I had asked why the government had not denounced it, why it had not… spoken. Of course there will never exist a favorable correlation of forces for this subject if the subject is never debated, if it is made popular, and to do this the President could raise the theme in interviews, debates and events in which she is participating.
With the timer counting the days that are left before the end of Dilma’s administration, it would be an opportunity to denounce the coup more openly, not only to protect the country, but above all to construct, in the dispute over narratives, a way out from the cul-de-sac we are in.
According to the government itself there are around 20 senators against impeachment. In order to stop the authorization and the removal of the President from office at the vote that will take place between May 12 and 17, the government must have more than 40 senators. And to stop the final impeachment at the vote to occur six months hence, the government would need to have 27 senators, a difficult number to reach after Michel Temer holds the Presidency and has formidable bargaining power in his hands, added to FIESP’s sponsorship.
Meanwhile there is no light at the end of the tunnel, except for that of a train coming in the wrong direction, by which I mean the efforts to criminalize all social movements. The only obstacle for my present pessimism is the beauty, the courage, and the strength of the demonstrations against the coup we have seen all over the country, which never stop in spite of all that is happening.
The strength of the Brazilian people, added to the shock that will come from watching a gang of crooks and golpistas storm into government, may bring interesting surprises into the political scenario.
Operation Car Wash, as expected, is back under the media spotlights. More than ever Car Wash will be used to cover up the chicanery behind this coup, to focus on ‘serious’ things like the ranch at Atibaia where Lula used to stay.
Left wing sectors, lost and trying to reconnect with some missing link in public opinion formed by television, play along with the mediatic narrative and say that the golpistas plan to ‘put an end’ to Operation Car Wash, repeating like parrots the messianic vision of the operation, forgetting all illegalities and international connections.
Of course Operation Car Wash has to come to an end! No such operation can be everlasting. This is madness. Car Wash is already in its 25th phase. The judge must stop jumping from one branch to another and concentrate on the investigations in progress.
Sergio Moro’s modus operandi is clearly illegal: the indiscriminate breaches of confidentiality of dozens of companies and people, through which information can be collected that lead to further breaches of confidentiality, in a geometrical progression that may lead to any desired target. This is the method of a dictatorship.
Moreover, the fight against corruption, something much larger than Operation Car Wash, has become confused with the operation led by Sergio Moro. Brazil has more than 5,000 judges, thousands of public prosecutors and attorneys, plus a gigantic repressive apparatus, all of which is sustained by the taxpayer, to fight against corruption. We do not need any vigilante judge, who ignores individual rights and makes use of such cruel methods which, instead of surgically attacking corruption, destroy whole sectors of our economy.
Marcelo Euler’s blog today highlights an article from Estadão with more selective leaks by Sergio Moro, amongst which the news that Moro will condemn José Dirceu next week. A leak about a future decision in a trial by any judge is a very bad joke, but it is a perfect definition of how criminal law is degraded in our country, specifically after the normalization of arbitrariness signed and sealed by Operation Car Wash.
I would also like to take the opportunity to inform my readers that law professor Rogério Dutra, from Universidade Federal Fluminense, an excellent writer, will be the blog’s new columnist. He has already published exclusively in Cafezinho a fundamental article for understanding the illegalities of Operation Car Wash and why it has always been one of the greatest dangers to our democracy, even bigger than the impeachment, because it has the nefarious power to deceive public opinion, here and abroad.
The international press understands the golpista mechanisms of impeachment here. Our next challenge, mine and Dutra’s, will be to show that Operation Car Wash is equally a media and illegal trap, using the mystique of the fight against corruption and imprisonment of important businessmen in order to impose a reactionary political agenda, that is dictatorial, deeply anti-politics, and connected to the interests of the coup and US imperialism.
The golpistas that are taking power now do not need to stop Operation Car Wash. The menaces of Operation Car Wash against them, as happened with Eduardo Cunha, have the sole purpose to force them to obey the instructions of the media and the market. Those who obey the media will not be disturbed by Operation Car Wash. Meanwhile, the same operation will try to put Lula behind bars, criminalize the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) and destroy the Brazilian left through methodology tested and approved in Ação Penal 470: in first place comes the narrative, then facts and investigations are adapted to this narrative. Where evidence is missing, informers are richly rewarded, followed by a ludicrous thesis about ‘remaining in power,’ as if it were a crime for a political party to seek power.
In short, night must get darker before dawn and dawn may take years to arrive.
But we will get used to the night and a new ecosystem of resistance will develop under new circumstances. The night will also protect us. The predicted injustice will make us more united.
O Cafezinho will remain where it always has been, in the trenches of free information, open debate, of the eternal struggle of men and women to overcome ignorance, the source of all injustice and evil.
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