Analysis: Lula faces growing pressure to distance himself from top court
If President Lula emerged from the first round of voting feeling he was bearing a disproportionate share of the political fallout from the Supreme Court crisis, the lawmakers who visited him this week after returning to Congress seem to have pushed him a couple of squares further toward outrage. They stopped by the presidential palace to greet him after the election.
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According to accounts from those lawmakers, some of whom have been implicated in the Banco Master scandal, the groundwork for a political deal is already in place should Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) win the presidency. The negotiations reportedly began even before the first round, involving former President Michel Temer, who appointed Justice Alexandre de Moraes to the Supreme Court, and Justice Gilmar Mendes. They gained momentum with a series of decisions suggesting the judicial system—and law enforcement authorities—were softening their stance toward the Bolsonaro camp.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes granted a semi-open prison regime to hairdresser Débora dos Santos, who used lipstick to deface a statue by sculptor Alfredo Ceschiatti outside the Supreme Court, and closed proceedings against bloggers Allan dos Santos and Oswaldo Eustáquio. The court’s longest-serving justice, Gilmar Mendes, closed an investigation into Flávio Bolsonaro’s running mate, Lower House member Alfredo Gaspar of the PL, from Alagoas. Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet supported allowing the presidential candidate to visit his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest.
Even Federal Police Director General Andrei Rodrigues has abandoned an investigation into alleged U.S. interference in Brazil’s elections. A report by Folha de S.Paulo that a cryptocurrency trading website is offering payments in digital currency to people willing to join a community supporting Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign also risks languishing without further action.
Even before the first round, Brazil’s top electoral court was already leaning toward invalidating the votes cast for Anthony Garotinho of Republicans in the Rio de Janeiro governor’s race, thereby securing victory for state lawmaker Douglas Ruas of the PL. The legal obstacles facing an appeal by Eduardo Paes, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate for governor, to have those votes counted are apparent from Paes’s own original request. The former Rio mayor initially went to the electoral courts seeking to invalidate Garotinho’s votes when he believed he could win in the first round. Paes’s appeal to the Supreme Court ran into a decision by Justice Cristiano Zanin to send the case back to the top electoral court. Judicial intervention in Rio’s electoral contest appears to have reached its limit.
On Bolsonaro’s side, a deal would benefit a wide range of figures, starting with the presidential candidate himself. Flávio Bolsonaro is under investigation over alleged requests for funding from former banker Daniel Vorcaro for Dark Horse, a film about his father. The lawmakers who visited Lula could not specify the scope of the purported agreement, or even whether the PL would abandon its efforts to remove its principal target, Alexandre de Moraes. But the expectation at the presidential palace is that Flávio Bolsonaro’s proposed Supreme Court reform is a mirage. With so many judicial seats potentially available for him to fill if elected, the senator would have little interest in stripping powers from a court he might eventually control.
At Lula’s meeting on Monday with reelected governors and cabinet ministers, there was broad agreement with one participant’s observation that this election has three protagonists: Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro and the Supreme Court—and that the third has landed squarely in Lula’s lap. A proposal to reform the court is seen as insufficient to contain the political damage. There are calls for the president to be more forceful in making clear that any solution would require a painful reckoning within the court itself. Within both the party and the government, pressure is growing on Lula not to let the perception persist that he is negotiating with Supreme Court justices while his opponent’s campaign works to put together a sweeping political deal.
President Lula
Adriano Machado/Reuters
