Barroso could have remained without declaration and without retraction – 07/13/2023 – Bruno Boghossian

It was September 2015, and Dilma Rousseff’s government was falling through the ranks. After participating in a seminar at Fiesp, Minister Gilmar Mendes foreshadowed the end of the PT cycle. He said the party had the objective of “eternalizing itself in power” and hinted that the plan would be stopped. “What got in the way? Lava Jato. Lava Jato ruined everything,” he declared.

Dilma’s impeachment would take place the following year, in a process with the marks of Lava Jato (which disclosed illegal wiretapping of the then president), Fiesp (which bankrolled protests against the PT) and the minister himself (which prevented Lula from taking office as chief of the Civil House).

Gilmar’s conversion into an ardent critic of the abuses in the operation lends a singular irony to the episode. But that was neither the first nor the last time that a STF minister made lighthearted comments about cases judged by the court and their impact on the country’s political life, while fraternizing with an entity that has its own interests in the game.

Luís Roberto Barroso stumbled over the language while attending a UNE congress on Wednesday (12). “I’ve already faced the dictatorship and I’ve already faced Bolsonarism”, said the minister, who presided over the TSE during the preparation of the last elections and faced attacks from the extreme right to the polls.

Everything indicates that Barroso was trying to give a wallet to the left-wing audience that booed him. As the toga is not used for political confrontation, the minister had to explain, the next day, that he was only referring to the former president’s coup d’état. He later offered the same justification to the Senate President, who had called the comment “unfortunate, inappropriate and inopportune”.

Barroso could have spent the week without the declaration and without the retraction. Demanding a vote of silence from members of the STF would be naive, as well as falling into the wave of Bolsonarists who demand punishment. But ministers need, at the very least, to avoid high-voltage political spaces and shield their judgments from partisan ink.

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