Judicial promiscuity in Lisbon – 02/01/2023 – Conrado Hübner Mendes

The meeting takes place in Portugal on the 3rd and 4th of February. With Brazilian participants and sponsors. Speakers range from public officials to figures from the business and financial elite. The language spoken is Portuguese, but the name is “Lide Brazil Conference Lisbon”. After all, the “manager” is João Doria, the persistent “host” of these festive lobby “enterprises” at the “Ritz Four Seasons”. There will be “more than 120 entrepreneurs”.

If it did not have such dubious legality and morality, such an outrageous event would already pay tribute to tackiness and bad taste. It awakens ethical, legal, sociological and aesthetic issues to the political chronicle. Not to mention the food for the prankster.

Perhaps Lide should undergo a “compliance” shock and adopt rules that respect republican principles. Perhaps the country should regulate the lobby and lighten the juspornographic darkness of these “conferences”. Perhaps someone should warn that publicizing Michel Temer as an “open speaker” is no longer good. And that the correct word in English is “opening speaker” (“open speaker” is a sound box, which does not metaphorize the character well).

But I will insist on the issue that most bothers the tired eye: no less than four Justices of the STF, a third of the court, agreed to participate in the private “meeting” after the embarrassment to which they voluntarily submitted themselves at the “Lide Brazil Conference New York”. There, together with family members, they were harassed by Bolsonaristas in the streets. They didn’t deserve it, but they knew it.

They were now invited to talk about “institutionality and cooperation”.

Starting with “institutionality”: their presence in Lisbon and New York, in addition to lectures and ordinary meetings with economic and political agents interested in the STF, is one of the most anti-institutional things they can do. Make no mistake when Gilmar Mendes complains about “deinstitutionalization”. He has been the maestro of the phenomenon for the last ten years (his company has also adopted Lisbon for overseas political whispers).

Ending with “cooperation”: Justices of the STF must cooperate with the Brazilian constitutional agenda and its urgencies, such as indigenous, environmental, arms, criminal, extrication, poverty, discrimination, economic regulation. The arbitrary delay of the STF causes serious human suffering. There is no morally or legally superior criterion for setting agenda priorities.

I pointed out six improprieties of this conduct in a column published on the eve of the New York meeting two months ago. Others emerged. Then came the January 8 attack. Then came the belated discovery of the Yanomami genocide, to which the STF has columns to render in view of its leniency with the Armed Forces. Then came the tightening of institutional relations with the military and the increasingly delicate legitimacy that the court administers.

Alexandre de Moraes, Gilmar Mendes, Luís Roberto Barroso and Ricardo Lewandowski thought it appropriate to say yes to the invitation. Again. Professors from prestigious universities in the country, such as USP, Uerj and UnB, the four could prioritize open seminars in universities around the world. But academic reputation doesn’t suit them. They found the role of private interest “cheerleaders” in this great colonial role-play justifiable.

Sponsors combine agents from the financial sector, such as Azimut Investments, Bradesco, Febraban and Capitual (digital bank), in addition to Invest.Rio (investment attraction agency of the city of Rio), Cedae (sanitation company in RJ), the EDP ​​(electric company), Eletra (electric transport), “Estre – garbage is just the beginning” (cleaning company), and Paper Excellence (pulp).

In this Disneyland of magistocratic patrimonialism, without “accountability”, there will be diners the height of Cláudio Castro, governor of Rio de Janeiro and flooded with accusations of corruption and militia involvement (a model of governance with modern institutionality).

What ministers do as private persons does not interest us in principle. What they do as STF judges is of public interest and general concern. Therefore, Brazil wants to know and plan ahead: where will the Lide Conference for the next semester take place? In Tuscany, Zanzibar or the Jersey Islands?

Rosa Weber, meanwhile, dignifiedly fulfilled her promise to rebuild a plenary overthrown by Bolsonarist terrorism and opened the judicial year of 2023. An example of discretion and attentive to the lack of sense of her peers, she did not go to New York. Don’t go to Lisbon.

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