PUBLIC DECLARATION ON THE DEFENSE OF LABOR LAW AND AGAINST POLITICAL JUSTICE IN BRAZIL

The signatories of this public declaration, Judges, Magistrates, Members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Lawyers, Professors, Researchers, Students, Brazilian Citizens, concerned about the seriousness of the historical and institutional moment of the country and, particularly, with the articulated sequence of acts aimed at destroying the rights conquered by the working class after continuous processes of struggle, increasing social inequalities, squandering national wealth, silencing any and all voices contrary to the current liberal project and protecting, in investigations and respective decisions, the elected officials aligned with the dismantling of the Democratic State of Law and Social, publicly reaffirm their commitment to Brazilian democracy and the implementation of the constitutional promises of building a just, fraternal and solidarity society.

1. We first EXPRESS our opinion that the presidential impeachment that occurred in 2016 was designed as a strategy to increase the economic model’s profit margins, with the abrupt withdrawal of social rights hard won by the Brazilian people, to privatize companies or sectors claimed as a relevant by the financial market, to demoralize those who are the politically deprived as relevant part of the operation and to protect, as far as possible, the illegitimate holders of power and their larger allies. This is a plan formulated by the elite of capitalists, which, by degrading citizenship and the rights of the working class, will also affect means of citizens do buy goods as consumers and also affect the stability of the system itself, harming micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs as well as speeding up the most dramatic concentration of income already experienced by capitalism throughout its history.

2. We DENOUNCE the different reactionary forces that have acted for the success of the parliamentary political coup given in 2016, with emphasis on the monolithic control of the mass media and political justice still under way in different branches of administration through the misuse of criminal investigation and judicial process for the purpose of political persecution from one group to another, to rise to power and fulfill a devastating agenda of achievements of the exploited, oppressed and excluded segments in Brazil.

3. We EMPHASIZE that political justice is not synonymous with ideology. Political justice is defined by the improper use of the process for political ends, usually by manipulative means or acts that invert the principiological matrix of law or due process, to destroy political enemies. To those who are enimies, a medieval criminal law. To the destroyers of labor rights and other civilizational achievements, accused or caught committing various crimes, however, the criminal law of an ultra postmodernity.

4. We ARE CONVINCED that political justice in Brazil is therefore directly responsible, among other social tragedies, for the parliamentary approval, in record time, of a so-called labor “reform” devastating the rights of workers, with the dismantling of the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws). The undue use of the process for political purposes was the key to all the regressive changes that have occurred since 2016, beginning with the presidential dismissal carried out between May and August of that year.

5. We will NEVER be silent in the face of the foolishness of egotistical economic interests or of their political justice, whatever the ideological side and the respective purposes, which, in the present case, are aimed at imposing absolute misery on the immense majority of the Brazilian people, the labor and social security “reforms”, the delivery of the Pre-Salt to the businnes market, the systematic persecution and the judicial conviction without evidence of the political enemies, might they represent or not a threat to the project of dilaceration of fragile Brazilian social structures.

6. Finally, we INVITE citizens of all professions to reflect on the latest events of July 11 and 12, 2017, which reveal the attempt to end Labor Law in Brazil with the approval of the PLC 38/2017, by the Federal Senate, as well as other related events that configurate an alliance in favor of the most petty interests of conservative and retrograde fractions of Brazilian society.

The signatories, within the present model of society, are guarantors and participants in the implementation of the constitutional rights of the Brazilian population, assuming a complex institutional function of interpreting the constitutional text and the infraconstitutional juridical system towards the fulfillment of the permanent objectives of the Federal Republic of Brazil, which is in line with the precepts set forth in the international human rights treaties. Such a monumental challenge involves increasing the culture of critical and scientific coexistence with civil society, the spirit of cooperation, and the institutional and individual effort to support being in a counter-hegemonic position. It requires us to listen, but also to speak. The ethical imperative and the functional duty prohibit us to silence in facing the coup, the dismantling of labor rights and the absurds of political justice.

Brazil, July of 2017