OPINION:The Brazilian people are watching a court devour itself while justice sits in the hallway. By Hotspotnews
On Tuesday, Justice André Mendonça removed the director-general of the Federal Police and the agency’s intelligence chief after evidence of irregular monitoring of authorities. The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court was already forming a majority behind that decision. By Wednesday morning, Justice Flávio Dino had put both men back in their chairs, scolded his colleague in writing, and treated a ruling of the Court as if it were a suggestion. The president of the STF, Edson Fachin, cancelled the plenary session. That is not a legal refinement. That is institutional anarchy with a robe on.
A conservative does not need a conspiracy theory to see the problem. A republic lives on hierarchy of rules, not hierarchy of friendships. When one justice can erase, in a single stroke, what a chamber has already begun to settle, the message to the country is simple: power in Brazil is personal. Procedure is costume. The Constitution is whatever the last monocratic order says it is until a more powerful colleague arrives.
This is the oldest conservative warning, and Brazil keeps proving it. Unchecked judicial power does not produce neutrality. It produces factions. One faction claims to defend institutions by concentrating them. The other is accused of acting in its own cause. The citizen, who cannot issue a liminar and cannot cancel a plenary, is left with the bill and an empty desire for justice.
A serious country would do three things at once.
- First, stop pretending that monocratic reversals of collegiate majorities are normal. They are not.
- Second, take the Vorcaro facts out of the inter-ministerial feud and put them under a process the public can follow.
- Third, remember that the Federal Police is not a trophy for any wing of the Court. It is an instrument of the law, or it is an instrument of someone.
Conservatives should say this without apology. Order is not repression. Order is the only thing that makes liberty possible for people who do not sit on the bench. If the Supreme Court cannot police its own conflicts, it should not lecture the nation about democracy. The people are not asking for vengeance. They are asking for a state that can finish a sentence: someone did this, the proof is this, the consequence is this.
Until that happens, every new “breaking news” from Brasília is the same story in a different font. The powerful argue. The institutions stall. The country waits.
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Sources cited by name: CNN Brasil coverage of Mendonça seeking Fachin; G1 reporting on Dino’s reinstatement of Andrei Rodrigues and political reaction; O Globo on the cancelled plenary and Dino’s criticism of Mendonça; Veja on the clash inside the Court; Reuters on the reversal of the police-chief removal; Gazeta do Povo on Dino’s references to Mendonça and Vorcaro; Estadão on the effect of the removal on ongoing investigations.