Brazil’s Emerging Judicial DictatorshipA single out-of-control judge can subvert massive sectors of public life with a little help from his friends.
Edgar Beltrán
Feb 28, 2023
Imagine that, in the U.S., a Supreme Court justice who is the president and vice president’s long-time associate orders some people be jailed without trial for posting threats on social media. Further, he sentences a congressman to nine years in prison for online threats to the Court. Then, he launches an investigation of fake news that leads to dozens of social media accounts being blocked and posts being removed and the messaging app Telegram being temporarily blocked throughout the country; he also orders raids on businesspeople without much evidence of wrongdoing.
Then the January 6 riot happens. Further emboldened, the Supreme Court justice suspends a sitting governor from his job, continues banning online voices, and jails, without bail, hundreds of people who did not enter the Capitol and just protested nearby.
This is precisely what is happening in Brazil. Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice that also heads the country’s Supreme Electoral Court, has accumulated power such that many, inside and outside Brazil, both left and right, are asking whether Brazil is slowly turning into a judicial dictatorship or, as many legal experts in Brazil call it, a juristocracia.
Moraes's actions happen in the context of a standoff between then-president Jair Bolsonaro and the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), the country’s Supreme Court. The conflict between the Court and Bolsonaro is as old as his presidency, but it came to a high point after Bolsonaro lost the presidential election on October 30, 2022, against Lula da Silva, a far-left candidate and former president. While Bolsonaro refused to concede directly, he asked protests against the results be peaceful and said he would obey the Constitution, which meant that Lula would peacefully become the next president of Brazil.
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Many are worried that Moraes is destroying democracy in order to save it by adding jury and executioner to his title of judge. Even the BBC and the New York Times, have all voiced concerns with Moraes’s actions.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/brazils-emerging-judicial-dictatorship/
