By the tight vote of 6 to 5, the Supreme Federal Court [STF in Portuguese] denied the preventive Habeas Corpus for former president Lula. He was sentenced in the second instance, under the accusation of passive corruption and money laundry in the case of the triplex in Guaruja – one of the nine processes for corruption he currently faces.
By PSTU.
It is worth to mention that five out of the six ministers that voted against Lula were named in the STF by himself and by former president Dilma Rousseff’s indication.
After the decision, the TRF 4 [Regional Federal Court] and judge Sergio Moro determined his prison.
The first thing we consider important to affirm is that Lula came to this situation because of the choices he made. He ruled for bankers, agro-men, construction companies and big businessmen. And he did it relying on the alliances and schemes of corruption so characteristic of the traditional politicians in our country. Sarney, Temer, Renan Calheiros, Maluf, Collor… those were the people he ruled the country with. He ended up buried in the mud with them.
Impunity did not end: prison for all corrupting and corrupted ones!
The traditional right-wing, the press, the rich’s justice, Bolsonaro and his supporters, they all say that Lula’s sentence ends with corruption and impunity. The PT and its ally, the PSOL, say that this means the deepening of a “coup,” an attack to the bourgeois democracy and the Rule of Law. We do not agree with either of those affirmations.
First, for the workers and poor people, ALL corrupting and corrupted ones should be in jail, have their goods confiscated and their companies expropriated. This is the opinion of the PSTU. We cannot accept the PT’s argument that defends Lula’s impunity by accusing the justice of being “selective.” Justice is selective, but the solution is to demand the prison of all others too, and not general impunity.
In this regard, it is necessary to demand trial, sentence and prison for Temer, Aécio [Neves], Alckmin, Bolsonaro, and all that gang “embedded” in the Brazilian State. Also for the corrupting businessmen, as they are, too, thieves of the public resources, and for all corrupting and corrupted ones in the country. We need to confiscate the goods of all of them.
Injustice continues
Injustice against the working class and the poor people continues. And it is not just unemployment, cut of rights by the labor reform, pauperization of the labor conditions, destruction of public health and education, lack of housing and sanitation, etc.
It is heard that Lula’s prison after being tried “only” in the second instance of the judiciary is an attempt against democracy, a “coup,” an offense to human rights. But Brazil has, today, over 290 thousand people in jail, most of them black and poor, that never had the right to any trial – not in the second, not even in the first instance.
When Lula took office, in his first term, there were near 80 thousand inmates, and by the end of the PT’s terms, there were about 250 thousand, which were never tried at all. Not to talk to about the genocide against the black, poor youth of the periphery, or about the brutal execution of the councillor Marielle Franco, in Rio de Janeiro.
All of this was and still is carried out intensely by the corrupt government of Temer. Injustice, then, is far from ending. Is democracy and “presumption of innocence” only for politicians and businessmen?
Brazil needs a revolution
It will not be this rich’s justice that will end impunity. In a country where the minimum wage does not reach $1000, judges receive (and defend to continue to receive) an immoral “housing assistance” of $4500 – even for who has a house of his/her own. And they have a $40,000 wage. So those judges will not make justice. Such justice serves bankers and big businessmen, as it always did.
The solution to the problems of the working class will not come from authoritarian measures, either. We need to reject any possibility of intervention by the militaries in the political life of the country. Brazil had 20 years of military dictatorship, already. It was completely corrupt, it only defended the interests of banks, big and multinational companies, in addition to forbidding any demonstration, repressing, torturing and killing workers and youth that opposed the regime.
Bolsonaro, the great defender of a new dictatorship, is a politician just like the rest – corrupt like most of them, he just voted in favor of the labor reform that cuts workers’ rights to help businessmen.
Only the workers’ mobilization can end injustice, defeat authoritarianism against the working people, and defend each democratic freedom that might be threatened. Brazil needs a rebellion to take down everyone from “up there” for the ones below to rule instead, and so end impunity, injustice, and build a socialist society.
