False guarantee flirts with the mess – 07/20/2023 – Reinaldo Azevedo

We still haven’t overcome “Bolsonarism”, understood the word as an attack on institutions and minimum standards of tolerance and civilized life. Why that? The press is full of a false guarantee that was being created during the four years of the “I wouldn’t-rape-because-you-don’t-deserve” mandate. For some scholars, apparently, the search and seizure warrant at the residence of Andreia Munarão and Roberto Mantovani, the couple who invested against Alexandre de Moraes and his family in Rome, threatens the rule of law more than the invectives against the minister and the aggression against his son. It’s an aberration.

There are still those who maintain that similar orders to those of Lava Jato are underway. It is nonsense that comes in a curious package: those who point out the supposed similarity in a critical tone often acted as henchmen of the task force, including in journalism. I’ll come back to the point later.

It was certainly not the Moraes who were bothered by the presence of the Mantovanis. If a Supreme Court judge is called, at the top of his voice, in a public environment, a “bandit, communist and bought” — such words, it should be noted, are a stamp of “Denomination of Controlled Origin”; is the Bolsonarian “DOC” -, there is a much more serious offense than “injury, threat and contempt”, articles 140, 147 and 331 of the Penal Code.

If that were all, the penalties, added at the top, would yield three years in prison. With mitigating factors, you can have a champagne with friends and celebrate the feat. Impunity would come out in the pee. In the next one, who knows, maybe another bully would improve the intervention and, with patriotic fury, break the face of a magistrate. I felt embarrassed reading the reviews. Who have not experienced it when emitting them, to do what? Such shame can be solipsistic; the right does not.

The TSE president, who is also the president of the TSE, did not become the target of attacks —he and his family were exposed to risks— because the aggressors are enthusiastic about his decisions or appreciate his remarkable dedication to the defense of legality. On the contrary. They demonstrated that the free exercise of the Judiciary Power does not serve them. They focused on article 359-L of the CP: “Trying, using violence or serious threat, to abolish the democratic rule of law, preventing or restricting the exercise of constitutional powers”. The sentence also scales: from 4 to 8 years.

“Oh, but did you really want something that serious?” It is also convenient to reread the text in light of the grammar. First, it punishes the “attempt”, not the fait accompli —a hypothesis in which it would be the scammer who imposed his will on the victims. Second, but no less relevant, pay attention to the gerunds “preventing” and “restricting”. The Brazilian Grammatical Nomenclature (NGB) does not recognize, and I am among those who consider this to be an error, the existence of the “modal adverbial subordinate clause”. Obviously, the nominal form of the verbs “prevent and restrict” expresses the way in which the abolition of the regime is sought. NGB’s error troubles some grammarians; leniency with the coup d’état frays the institutional grammar.

If the judicial system starts to consider as a crime of lesser offensive potential the embarrassment, with openly political motivation, of a member of a superior court, then democracy will already be in the abomasum, the fourth room in the stomach of ruminants.

Stating that simple injury does not give rise to a search and seizure warrant does not translate into an opinion on the reasonableness or otherwise of such an instrument, but it does issue a judgment —wrong!— about what happened at the airport. Ignoring that the intimidation of a member of the STF belongs to a chain of events in which the vandalism of the seat of the court itself is part of exercising the right with the visors of ideology, interest or alienation. It would have been irresponsible not to make the decision, taking into account a pre-judgment by way of omission. The good to be protected by the measure is not limited to the honor of the minister. We know the cost of underestimating risk.

As for the fact that we are experiencing a new car wash, I observe: false symmetry is one of the laziest forms of thinking. Regardless of what distinguishes them, Schopenhauer is like a Komodo dragon. Differences determine the reason for being of each thing.

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