The car wash sphinx, chapter 3 – 08/02/2023 – Conrado Hübner Mendes

The art of doing nothing guaranteed Augusto Aras an undisputed place in the pantheon of Brazilian political infamy. His omission is a mark he leaves for history. But we must not reduce it to that. His legacy inventory is incomplete.

The Attorney General of the Republic of Bolsonaro was not only silent. It wasn’t just a spectator and government partner who tried to break democracy and let people die. On a conservative estimate, 300,000 preventable deaths. And no legal constraints, as described in the last chapter.

In this context, omission becomes qualified and superlative. It is documented in reports, academic reports and criminal representations against Aras presented by civil society, by senators and even former prosecutors.

But let’s not underestimate Augustus. The perversity of his mandate is not limited to inaction in the face of pandemic slaughter, the devastation of the Amazon, indigenous hunger, electoral vandalism, the attempted coup. His collaboration with the project involved authoritarian practices of his own making (and those of his subordinates, for whom he is responsible).

Among the poorly accounted characteristics of his management is the intimidating routine. In the historical dictionary of cowardice, there are entries about it. Intimidation is a technique for the gestation and dissemination of fear, self-censorship and silence.

The intimidated person fears for his life, his freedom, his profession, his livelihood. Either you take the risk of facing it, or you cocoon yourself. Either think three times before taking the action the bully tries to discourage, or shut up. And not just the intimidated: in a climate of intimidation, the entire community tends to withdraw. The aim is not restricted to the concrete disaffection, but to any potential disaffection.

The Constitution assigns to the PGR the duty to produce justice, the impartial application of the law. Ask for courage. Augusto Aras chose to produce smoke and aggression against freedom. Instead of controlling the main state authorities, he preferred to socialize in the palace. And he did not fail to act against those he perceived as enemies.

Aras adopted legal-formal measures against critics. Not only did he fail to answer questions based on facts and figures, he not only exercised the right to be nervous in the face of humorous nicknames with the letter P in PGR, but also asked for the arrest of a professor and journalist. He targeted not just two individuals, but the entire community of teachers and journalists. He found it legitimate to resort to the Penal Code and contribute to incarceration in the country.

Its target was not just external. Aras also dedicated himself to neutralizing non-aligned public prosecutors and conflagrating the institution of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office. For this, his management began to use and abuse the correctional power.

In the National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, a body politically controlled by Aras, prosecutors began to live with disciplinary administrative procedures hovering over their heads. Processes with no deadline to end, with unsubstantiated and shelved requests for view. Processes that do not only deal with possible disciplinary faults, but with the core activity, which is beyond the competence of the CNMP.

Punishment can come at any time. Or not, nobody knows. Sanctions were applied to prosecutors for the practice of elementary procedural acts, such as the public disclosure, without confidential data, of a complaint. Similar cases are pending.

Ordinary practices, previously allowed and routinized, started to bring the risk of dismissal. The stability that prosecutors need to control holders of political and economic power is no longer guaranteed. It was raffled by the head of the institution.

Each procurator does with this instability what he prefers. The fear of losing his job becomes proportional to the size of the criminal scheme he is willing to investigate. But the moral backbone of the institution has fractured. And the ability to play its constitutional role has suffered a much deeper blow than we have noticed.

Aras seems to deal with authority relationships like this: he methodically flatters those at the top (according to his constitutional worldview, the president, the generals and ministers of the STF); demands adulation from those below (any attorney of the Republic, professor, journalist, citizen). If not, he threatens and pursues. It is a very effective technique to freeze the most important institution for controlling political crime. And it didn’t end here.

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