Due Process and Constitutional Guarantees

People who went to Brasília to express their indignation and who today are imprisoned with absurd sentences, the result of trials full of irregularities.

At another meeting here in São Paulo, last week I think, with the São Paulo Commercial Association, you advocated not only impeachment but the imprisonment of STF (Supreme Federal Tribunal) ministers, even though we are still in a very incipient, very embryonic phase of the inquiry into the Master case.

For a long time we have been denouncing from this Senate floor abuses, tramplings, and disrespect for the Federal Constitution, and this is very bad; it weakens the democratic rule of law and undermines democracy itself.

I imagine the law students who are in law schools today, when they are taught about constitutional values, about the guidelines of the Federal Constitution, about what the rule of law is, due process, the adversarial principle and full defense, confronted with what is the narrative, the rhetoric, the teaching in the classroom in an academic environment and what they see outside the academic environment in real life, what is happening and, lamentably, involving the highest Court of this country.

As if the action that culminated in the conviction of former President Bolsonaro and a number of other men and women, in what became nationally known as the coup plot, in a tainted process, in an incompetent forum, with judges who were clearly disqualified from judging, were not enough, we have a person who is today imprisoned for an accusation of a crime that did not occur – he is imprisoned for a crime that was not committed, for a trip he did not take, for a meeting he did not attend, yet he remains imprisoned.

And behold: the Public Ministry, as the holder of the criminal action, when proposing the opening of a public and unconditional criminal prosecution, does not charge former President Bolsonaro, because it did not find elements, because it did not find evidence, because the environment did not even allow him to have any influence over what was happening – and it would be very presumptuous to imagine otherwise.

And, to no one's surprise – I would not like to say this phrase, but to no one's surprise, because for this magistrate there is no Constitution, there is no law; the law is what he says, the Constitution is what he speaks – he simply decides, contrary to what was in the course of the proceedings, and says: "No, he must remain detained to guarantee the possibility of applying criminal law", that is, he is presupposing that he will be convicted.

We will have to revisit this period at some point or else we will no longer live under the rule of law in Brazil, which is sad, because not even in exceptional periods can measures of this nature be admitted, measures that exceed, that challenge legality, that challenge the Federal Constitution, yet we are witnessing events of this magnitude and seriousness.