Moraes has a routine of jokes with fame and Bolsonarist targets – 09/04/2023 – Politics

The notoriety achieved by Alexandre de Moraes after starring in some of the most tense episodes of the 2022 election highlighted a facet of the minister already known to those closest to him, but not to the general public: that of a joker.

At events and lectures, the minister of the STF (Federal Supreme Court) has used his sense of humor to talk about football, Bolsonaristas, fake news and even his own reputation as a tough guy.

The joking comments usually make the audience laugh, but they are not always unanimous, especially when they target people who are or may be judged by the minister.

On the last 4th, at an event at the Faculty of Law of USP, Moraes mocked the situation of a person who was, he said, detained.

“A certain person whose name I won’t say, who is now in prison, invented at a certain moment that I was a PCC lawyer. Xandão is a PCC lawyer. for moral damages. I have already won 12 actions for damages for moral damages.”

The offense was said by Roberto Jefferson, against whom Moraes filed a claim for moral damages. The far-right Bolsonarist ex-deputy has been arrested since October by order of the minister after firing grenades and more than 20 rifle shots at federal police.

Last December, Moraes commented on an event by Minister Dias Toffoli about data on arrests and fines for those who participated in the invasion of the Capitol, in the United States.

He drew laughter from the audience when he said that, compared to the US, there would still be “a lot of people to arrest and a lot of fines to apply”.

Moraes’ decisions against Bolsonarists made him the group’s preferred target. The minister’s reputation for strictness did not escape the minister’s tirades.

At the same event at the USP Faculty of Law, where Moraes is a professor, he recalled the episode in which he even ordered the blocking of Telegram in the country.

“Telegram for a while refused to accept the TSE meeting invitation. It refused to obey the Brazilian court order, as it did all over the world, saying that it was immune to national jurisdiction because its headquarters were in Dubai”, he recalled.

“Great. What did I do? Blocked. No more Telegram. Fifty-three million people who used it would be very happy with me. They would add to the other 50 million who are already happy with me.”

In April 2022, a few days after the STF sentenced the then-deputy Daniel Silveira (PTB-RJ) to 8 years and 9 months in prison, and Jair Bolsonaro (PL) granted the ally pardon, Moraes participated in a another event with law students in São Paulo, at Faap.

When talking about misinformation, he joked that family group “should be unconstitutional”.

“And if you leave, you are the sinner. You can’t leave, you can be silent,” he said in a good-natured tone. “You have to put up with those messages that really educate a human being a lot.”

The minister, who embraced the banner of regulating social networks, said that his own mother reposted videos with fake news against him without paying attention to the content.

“Even though they think I’m bad, I’m not going to arrest my mother for this,” he joked.

Football is another theme present in the minister’s repertoire of humor and he once came across the country’s political situation.

In a lecture at an event by the Lide group, Moraes responded to a businessman who had said that he was more popular than a soccer player.

“But I earn a lot less,” said the minister, prompting laughter from the audience.

After the same businessman stated that, on the other hand, Moraes’ “caneladas” were “more digital than real” and that no one gave a “red card” to the minister, he replied: “They tried. They tried, but the VAR did not allow it “.

Moraes accumulated a series of impeachment requests against him. One of them, presented by Bolsonaro in August 2021, was rejected days later by Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG).

The minister’s jokes do not always have a political connotation. A Corinthian, Moraes has already joked in a STF session about Palmeiras not having a World Cup title.

In the lecture at USP at the end of March, he returned to the theme, defending the transparency of algorithms. He established a hypothesis of searching on the Internet “Palmeiras does not have the World Cup”.

“It’s true, isn’t it? When you look it up, the first piece of news comes: ‘No, it’s not true. Palmeiras in 1615 beat the Várzea team, and that’s considered a title’, because someone from Palmeiras made the algorithm, right? Sponsorship: Crefisa.”

For Rubens Glezer, professor at FGV Direito SP and coordinator of the Supremo em Pauta research group, it is important to analyze Moraes’ speeches within the context of the Bolsonaro government —which elected the court and some of its ministers as opponents throughout his term.

He sees this type of speech and posture by the minister in public opinion as part of a narrative dispute. “It’s to win public opinion. Public opinion that would eventually defend the court.”

“He wants to trust himself as a guarantor of democracy, period. And, based on that, he even pleads for the legitimacy of the flexibility he makes of conventions, of procedures”, says Glezer. “[Como se dissesse] It’s not a normal situation and I won’t behave like a normal situation.”

UFSCar (Federal University of São Carlos) professor Fabiana Luci de Oliveira considers that joking statements can have a negative impact on the perception of the minister’s performance. “He may have just been joking, but he represents a lot of power, so that could delegitimize future decisions he might make.”

She cites as an example Moraes’ speech about there being “many people to arrest and fine”, which could generate criticism from the targets of his decisions, giving strength, for example, to narratives that the minister was persecuting them.

Still according to Fabiana, who is leader of the Nucleus of Studies in Law, Justice and Society and researches the Supreme Court, the literature points to the perception of moral authority of judges as one of the dimensions that shape public trust in relation to the supreme courts.

“And what are these symbols? The clothes, the technical language, a distance from the population”, he says.