Analogous body to CNJ, CNMP also acts ideologically

The National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (CNMP), similarly to the National Council of Justice (CNJ), as shown in a report by the People’s Gazettehas become an instrument for advancing leftist agendas, with a creative interpretation of what the Constitution says.

In a resolution published in 2019, for example, the CNMP endorsed the thesis of “institutional racism”, imported from the radical left in the United States. According to this current of thought, it is possible for black people to be victims of racism even if there is no racist person in power; institutions, by themselves, already practice discrimination.

The resolution determines that, when evaluating police activity by prosecutors, the racial aspect must be taken into account. One of the items on the list calls for “the modification of the institutional structures of the police forces, for the adequate confrontation and overcoming of inequalities arising from prejudice and ethnic-racial discrimination, in the exercise of police activity.”

Here is how the text defines institutional racism: “The question of racial selectivity has to do with the multiple dimensions with which racism manifests itself in the set of established social relations, especially in Institutional Racism, based on discriminatory filters that integrate the subjectivity of public agents, referring to the need for specific action that appropriates appropriate coping strategies based on the identification and recognition of this Reality.”

The claim that institutions are racist is made on the basis of flimsy inferences. For example: the resolution cites that black people are proportionally more likely to be victims of murder. But it does not explain why the cause of the problem would be racism, and not other factors (such as the fact that this population has a lower income).

For Thiago Vieira, Master in Law and president of the Brazilian Institute of Law and Religion (IBDR), the adoption of an ideological agenda by the CNJ and the CNMP is the result of a “militant neoconstitutionalism”, which puts the text of the Constitution in the background and the popular will. “The problem is this neoconstitutionalism that allows elastic exegesis of the norm, at the whim of the interpreter”, he defines.

According to the Constitution, it is up to the Federal Senate to “prosecute and judge” the members of the National Council of Justice when they commit a crime of responsibility. To date, no member of the CNJ has been impeached by senators.

The CNMP has a similar structure to the CNJ, with 14 members — in addition to members of the Public Ministry, the collegiate is made up of two judges, two lawyers and two citizens.