{"id":180729,"date":"2021-03-15T12:02:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T12:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=180729"},"modified":"2021-03-14T08:25:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T08:25:16","slug":"brazils-high-court-invalidates-lulas-convictions-leaving-him-eligible-to-run-against-bolsonaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/brazils-high-court-invalidates-lulas-convictions-leaving-him-eligible-to-run-against-bolsonaro\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil’s High Court Invalidates Lula’s Convictions, Leaving Him Eligible to Run against Bolsonaro"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The decision by a Brazilian judge reverses Lula’s unjust and politicized persecution. The corruption that led to this holds many lessons for the west.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Brazil\u2019s ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on November 9, 2019 as he walked free from jail (Photo by NELSON ALMEIDA\/AFP via Getty Images); Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on February 24, 2021 (Photo by EVARISTO SA\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

10 Mar 2021 – <\/em>The resounding victory of the seven-term right-wing Congressman Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil\u2019s 2018 presidential elections was stunning by every metric.<\/p>\n

Consigned for decades to the political fringes due to his explicit praise for the military dictatorship that savagely ruled Brazil until 1985 along with other outlandish statements<\/a> (\u201cI would be incapable of loving a gay son. I prefer that he die in an accident\u201d), the former Army Captain\u2019s ascension to the presidency of the world\u2019s sixth-most populous country was highly consequential for the region and the world. That he won by a large margin in a country that had previously voted for the center-left Workers\u2019 Party (PT) in four consecutive national elections dating back to 2002, and whose media and political establishment were undisguised in their revulsion toward him, made his victory, whatever else one might say about him, politically impressive.<\/p>\n

But that victory has always borne an enormous asterisk: the judicial elimination of his most formidable opponent. Polls throughout 2017 and into 2018 uniformly showed<\/a> former two-term president Lula da Silva, founder of the Workers\u2019 Party, as the clear frontrunner<\/a>. That should not be surprising: Brazil experienced massive economic growth under Lula\u2019s two terms, eventually passing the UK to become<\/a> the world\u2019s sixth largest economy (it is now back to twelfth<\/a>); millions were lifted out of poverty; and Lula was term-limited out of office with an 86% approval rating. \u201cThat\u2019s my man right there. The most popular politician on Earth,\u201d proclaimed<\/a> then-President Barack Obama when he met Lula in 2010 at the G-20 summit, Lula\u2019s final year in office.<\/p>\n

As Americans know better than anyone, none of this proves Lula would have defeated Bolsonaro had he been permitted to run. As the world saw in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming frontrunner, polling data can be wrong. And just as was true of Donald Trump in 2016, one could make the case that 2018 in Brazil was the perfect storm for a Jair Bolsonaro victory no matter his opposition.<\/p>\n

Still, we will never know whether Lula would have prevented Bolsonaro\u2019s victory. That is because a low-level judge in the mid-sized city of Curitiba named Sergio Moro declared Lula, in early 2018, to be guilty of various corruption felonies, based on procedures, charges and evidence so dubious that even Lula\u2019s long-time critics were skeptical. But the guilty verdict was issued so quickly that it enabled an appellate court notorious for rubber-stamping Moro\u2019s rulings to affirm the conviction, and thus declare Lula ineligible to run in 2018 by virtue of his losing his political rights. With Lula out of the way, Bolsonaro crushed PT\u2019s replacement, the highly competent but little-known former one-term S\u00e3o Paulo Mayor, Fernando Haddad, by seventeen points in the first round and then ten points in the run-off.<\/p>\n

For years, Judge Moro and the team of young prosecutors who oversaw the sprawling anti-corruption probe called “Operation Car Wash\u201d (Lava Jato<\/em>) were regarded as national heroes, as they brought charges and sentenced to long prison terms some of the nation\u2019s most powerful oligarchs and politicians. As their popularity grew, they increasingly resorted to radical and lawless tactics against their targets, including ordering people imprisoned for months or years with no trial until they accused others of criminality, often falsely. But Moro\u2019s status as a national hero and international icon \u2014 he was named to<\/a> the TIME 100 list in 2016 \u2014 meant that no institutions, including superior courts, were willing to challenge him even when he transgressed clear legal and ethical lines.<\/p>\n

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All of that began to change in November, 2018. One of Bolsonaro\u2019s first acts after he won the election was to offer Moro a huge promotion and an unprecedented amount of power by becoming his Minister of Justice and Public Security. In other words, after Judge Moro removed Bolsonaro\u2019s primary obstacle from his path by finding Lula guilty under dubious circumstances, Bolsonaro turned around and elevated Moro to a top spot in the government: quite a reward for a job well done.<\/p>\n

Even Moro\u2019s most stalwart supporters, including many of the Car Wash prosecutors, were indignant at this obvious quid pro quo<\/em>, complaining<\/a> that it would forever taint the legacy of their work by vindicating their most virulent critics. For years, those critics insisted that Car Wash, far from the noble and high-minded crusade against corruption it was depicted to be, was instead a sustained abuse of law for naked political and ideological ends, to achieve what they could not accomplish at the ballot box: namely, the destruction of the Workers\u2019 Party. It was, in sum, classic lawfare<\/em>. When Moro went to join the Bolsonaro government that he helped usher in \u2014 not just as any official but one so powerful that the Brazilian press began referring to him as Super-Minster \u2014 even his allies acknowledged the ammunition it gave to this long-standing suspicion.<\/p>\n

The collapse of Moro and the Car Wash probe accelerated greatly on Mother\u2019s Day of 2019 \u2014 Sunday, May 12 \u2014 when an anonymous source contacted me<\/a> to say he had hacked into the Telegram accounts of some of Brazil\u2019s most powerful officials, including Moro and the chief Car Wash prosecutor, Deltan Dallagnol. In the massive archive he provided me was indeed years worth of conversations and documents produced by Moro and high-ranking officials, and it revealed systemic corruption on their part, including the use of flagrantly illegal and unethical tactics to ensure Lula\u2019s conviction.<\/p>\n

That brave source, Walter Delgatti, has been arrested on hacking charges and awaits his criminal trial. His courageous leaking enabled us to report<\/a> more than 100 stories in Portuguese<\/a> and English<\/a> over the next nine months, some in partnership with Brazil\u2019s largest media outlets, that revealed that among the most corrupt figures in this anti-corruption probe were the heroic judge that led it and the team of prosecutors whom he improperly and secretly commanded<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Four months after our first set of articles was published, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered Lula released from prison<\/a>, and Moro began suffering a series of once-unthinkable defeats in Congress, in the Supreme Court and in public opinion. Even media outlets long supportive of him called for<\/a> his resignation. In April, 2020, Moro resigned his position as Bolsonaro\u2019s Justice Minister, accusing the president of serious crimes involving attempts to interfere in the investigative process to protect his son, Senator Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro, from a growing corruption scandal.<\/p>\n

But Lula, back in November, 2019, was freed from prison on the ground that his imprisonment was improper while he still had appeals left to pursue. It was not an exoneration. That was a technical ruling that left his convictions in place and thus made Lula still ineligible to run against Bolsonaro in 2022. It has been assumed since then that Bolsonaro would be able to run for re-election without having to face Lula.<\/p>\n

All of that changed<\/strong> over the last twenty-four hours. On Thursday, a justice of the Brazilian Supreme Court who has long been known as one of the most ardent supporters and defenders of Operation Car Wash ruled that Lula\u2019s criminal convictions were invalid because Judge Moro never had the legal authority to judge the case in the first place (that the prosecutors knew this to be so but hid it was one of the first stories we published<\/a>). Yesterday\u2019s ruling had the effect of sending Lula\u2019s case all the way back to the starting point, to a different court. That makes it extremely unlikely that he could be found guilty both in the original court and on appeal in time to ban him from running against Bolsonaro in 2022.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro\u2019s approval ratings have weakened significantly with his gross mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, leaving Brazil as clearly the worst<\/a> of all major countries in terms of financial and social damage. The expiration of monthly checks, the payment of which had inflated his popularity in 2020, has further weakened him. And multiple scandals<\/a> involving his family remain a serious weight on his back, particularly since his anti-corruption posturing was a major part of his 2018 appeal.<\/p>\n

But much like Trump, the president\u2019s hard-core base of roughly 30% of the voting population has remained rock-solid, while another 30% is ambivalent. That leaves roughly 40% of the country staunchly opposed to him. Bolsonaro is vulnerable, but his defeat in 2022 is far from certain. Mainstream political and media centers hate Bolsonaro more than ever. But as was true for Trump and the U.S., when much of the population (validly) distrusts and despises these mainstream institutions, their hatred is as much of an asset as a liability, if not on balance a net benefit.<\/p>\n

That is what makes the prospect of Lula\u2019s candidacy so significant. Contrary to the conventional belief that Lula and his Workers\u2019 Party are too widely hated to win again, a recent poll found that the percentage of Brazilians saying they would never<\/em> vote for Lula was lower than any other potential 2022 candidate, including Bolsonaro. As the economy sags and the multiple crises that led to Bolsonaro\u2019s election worsen, it is easy to envision a sort of nostalgia for Lula \u2014 who has not been in power since 2010 \u2014 replacing the intense anti-PT sentiment that was a key factor in Bolsonaro\u2019s 2018 victory.<\/p>\n

A major variable is the boost Lula will get from the public perception that, all along, he was the victim of persecution, exactly as he insisted for years.<\/p>\n

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Here's an amazing excerpt from the interview I did with Lula in May, 2019 — when he was still unjustly imprisoned. It was weeks before we began our expos\u00e9s (he didn't know we had the archive). He speaks about the collusion between his corrupt prosecutors\/judge & the press: pic.twitter.com\/VqXmNDJfsV<\/a><\/p>\n

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 8, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n