Moraes is who the institutions designated against Bolsonaro’s coup – 01/21/2023 – Celso Rocha de Barros

Contrary to what Bolsonaristas say, Alexandre de Moraes is not a dictator. He is just the guy that Brazilian institutions have designated to lead the fight against Jair Bolsonaro’s coup d’état.

Moraes was designated for this role by his STF colleagues, who always ratified his decisions. The STF, in turn, acted by constitutional obligation and clear delegation from the National Congress.

Brazilian congressmen could have limited Moraes’ powers, including changing the Constitution; Bolsonaro tried to do this several times, without any success.

Congressmen even overcame their traditional corporatism to maintain the arrest of deputy Daniel Silveira, who recorded a video narrating his violent fantasies with ministers of the supreme court. In a specific case, the President of the Senate preferred to let the STF order the opening of the CPI on the pandemic, for which all the legal requirements had already been met, just to throw the responsibility of fighting Bolsonaro on the STF.

It’s easy to see why Congress, during the most conservative legislature yet seen, did this.

In recent years, Congress continued to negotiate positions and funds with Jair Bolsonaro, culminating in the secret budget scandal. But everyone always knew that Jair was a scammer. And everyone always knew that, if the coup succeeded, being a deputy or senator would no longer have any value. The solution found by the parliamentarians was to outsource the fight against the coup to the STF while continuing to negotiate funds and positions with Jair.

And there is no doubt that, without the action of the STF, the coup might have won. The Bolsonaristas’ hatred is explained by this: if only they had had a little more chance of lying, a little more chance of putting the road police in to try to prevent poor people from voting, a little more money from a scammer businessman who was afraid of being arrested, maybe the coup would have worked.

Does this mean that “the institutions worked”? For God’s sake, no.

Half of the work done by Moraes and the STF should have been done by the Attorney General of the Republic. If Congress, instead of outsourcing its functions to the STF, had impeached Bolsonaro, Brazil would have had a president during the pandemic willing to buy vaccines. If the Armed Forces had, from the beginning, made it clear that they would shoot anyone who attempted a coup, nobody would be afraid to put Mourão in the Presidency. And, for most of that time, the establishment lied to the public, day after day, that Jair was not a coup plotter.

It is legitimate to disagree with Moraes’ decisions. Last week, as I prepared to discuss the issue with journalist Glenn Greenwald, I spoke with some brilliant professors who disagree, like Luciano da Ros of UFSC and Diego Werneck of Insper.

The two, however, emphatically agree that Bolsonaro’s coup d’état has always been incomparably more dangerous to democracy than any mistake Moraes may have made.

And for those who doubt that urgency justified some of Moraes’ decisions, I would add: based on precedent, either you punish a coup d’état while it is still an attempt, or it takes 50 years to set up a truth commission.

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