Happy birthday, Sérgio Moro!

By Denise Assis, for the Journalists for Democracy 

Today is the birthday of former judge and former Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro. I wish him many more years of life. Yes. He needs time to reflect and, if there is a single vestige of human feeling left in that body, may he live long enough to one day repent for all the harm he has done to this country.

He needs, for example, to explain why he didn't punish the directors of Petrobras in an exemplary manner, leaving standing the most valuable company for our people, built over years with the sacrifice of countless Brazilians who dedicated hours studying so that we could be the holders of the technology for deep-water oil exploration.

He needs to clarify for the public – since he hasn't done so for his own conscience – why he arrested and investigated Renato Duque, Jorge Zelada, and Paulo Roberto Costa (the all-powerful director of supply), who were admittedly guilty and convicted and are now serving their sentences in their luxury condominiums, spanning many square meters, with swimming pools, gyms, and everything their millionaire salaries could buy. (But it didn't seem enough to them). Today, we are on equal footing with them in "house arrest" (confined by the pandemic), but not in the luxury that surrounds them.

He needs to consider how many engineers, technicians, and other employees were laid off and thrown into unemployment because of his frenzy and lust for media headlines. Our entire network of large construction companies was destroyed by his spectacular and sensationalist operations. These laid-off people are at home, watching economic commentators relay the news that this idleness will hardly be reversed in the next three years. After all, the unemployment rate in the country rose to 12,6% in the quarter ending in April of this year, according to data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Sérgio Moro needs to know that in thousands of homes across this country, even before mourning the victims of the pandemic that this government allowed to spread, what truly branched out was the collapse of medium-sized businesses, suppliers of services and equipment to the large construction companies that he drove into bankruptcy. Wasn't the intention to investigate the mismanagement of their owners? Yes, it was. But he should have left the companies operating, in the hands of the heirs or senior management, continuing their activities and preserving jobs. There is a chain of small and medium-sized business owners linked to the parent companies of these large corporations, Sérgio Moro. You would have learned this if you had studied, but you preferred to postpone "specialization" exclusively in your area, if you even dedicated yourself enough to it, since you didn't even want to take the Brazilian Bar Association exam. Perhaps to avoid the embarrassment of failing.

May you have many years ahead of you, Sérgio Moro, to regret being the instrument of the coup's architects. They allied themselves with your group of "prosecutors" and searched so hard until they found the edge of the hole into which they threw the country. Don't blame the pandemic. The government's incompetence in coordinating the fight against the virus – which brought us to more than 90 deaths – was preceded by the inability to rebuild the economy, hit by the total destruction of its main companies, such as those in the meatpacking industry, which you also devastated with your shows. A touch of Keynes would have been enough. But Minister Paulo Guedes wants to see the devil, but doesn't want to face one of his books, a work he claims to have read three times.

Is this a speech in favor of impunity? No, Sérgio Moro. It's against injustice, against bias. When someone goes on television and says they wanted to corner the accused in the case where they are acting as judge, they are confessing to a crime. An abuse of power. Your role, Sérgio Moro, was not to knock out the "adversary." It was to judge him with the impartiality that you threw away when you entered that room and chose who you would interrogate, and how your prisoner should be questioned.

Think of that woman who looked after a farm and was taken to an interrogation in front of her eight-year-old son – who was also questioned – about activities as far removed from her life as New York, which you delighted in visiting. Think of the trauma that boy suffered, perhaps having dreamed of becoming a judge when he grew up. You may have destroyed that future too.

Remember the discomfort of Mrs. Marisa, the one to whom the prosecutor on your team wanted to serve salted meat to kill her with a spike in blood pressure. Think about the possible ill will aroused in the medical team that attended to the grandson of "that thief"... Consider, Moro, the magnitude of that man's pain, isolated in a tower – like the man in the iron mask – shedding tears for the loss of his brother, whom he couldn't say goodbye to...

But you know what's worse, Sérgio Moro? For 2022, they're going to package you in a glittering outfit and sell you as the bee's knees. You'll believe it, and even those affected by your actions will buy into this fable, which that TV channel has already started producing, just like the series where you appeared as the hero. Count on this, though. As long as we have the strength, we will preach to the Real Brazil, the one Ariano Suassuna spoke of, to dismantle the farce of the official Brazil you thought you could sell us. Oh! And don't forget to take some time to reread the articles about the death of former minister Teori Zavascki. Happy birthday!