Public Prosecution Service: Dogmatic Truth versus Factual Truth

Given speculation suggesting that, in response to investigations of politicians in Operation Lava Jato, Congress is mobilizing to establish a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry against the Public Prosecutor's Office, with the aim of investigating an alleged leak in the list of those under investigation presented to the Supreme Federal Court last week, some issues must be considered.

Initially, even without knowing if this strategy exists, and if it does exist, whether it will succeed, what seems reasonable to assume is that, if there is an initiative, even if merely as retaliation, to revive PEC 37, there will hardly be another rejection. 

In 2013, it should be recalled, approval narrowly missed. Had the June protests been delayed by another week, the text would have been approved without major difficulties. This was also because there was a relatively well-established majority in Congress, convinced that the investigative activities of the Public Prosecutor's Office were frequently conflicting with the constitutional duties of the judicial police, and therefore should be centralized in the latter.

However, the protests came, and with them, a collective outcry against PEC 37, forcing a parliamentary retreat. Despite this, few would believe today that the public that once took to the streets against the alleged attack on the Public Prosecutor's Office remembers the content of the PEC or even recalls it at all. 

The fact is that channeling the rebellion towards rejecting the Amendment was nothing more than a mass manipulation strategy, meticulously calculated by the media, with the sole objective of focusing the attention of the self-proclaimed "outraged" on one issue, diverting it from the truly important topic of discussion: Political Reform. Along with this, the attempt to weaken the government, a year before the presidential elections, was also very clear.

But is anyone willing to take to the streets again to focus their discussion on a cause that is definitely not the most important – the Public Prosecutor's Office – instead of protesting for the essential Political Reform? Probably not twice. 

First, because it is already known that what truly matters for the country's future is political reform. Fighting corruption without political reform is like trying to mop up ice after ice. Another reason is, in fact, the evident discomfort with the usual "sheriff" posture of certain members of the Public Prosecutor's Office (and the Judiciary, on a smaller scale), people who, on the one hand, believe they have the right to assume that everyone is a delinquent, but who, on the other hand, place themselves above any suspicion, like deities above mortals.

The harsh reality is that there is hardly anyone currently involved in politics in Brazil, anyone who authorizes expenditures, who doesn't suffer some kind of apprehension about the possibility of one day being surprised by a court order for their arrest. No matter how serious the person is, until they prove their innocence, their honor is already ruined. Who would want such a trauma for themselves and their family? 

Sadly, this is the path being paved by those who revel in the wave of criminalization of politics currently underway in the country. I wish they at least had the awareness of how much this distances Brazilians, out of sheer fear, from engaging with public affairs—men and women who could very well be contributing to the nation.

Now, if the idea is to institutionalize the judicialization of politics in the country, and this seems to be the objective, let us consider the lessons of Hannah Arendt for a more adequate assimilation of concepts such as politics and factual truth, and their interactions with dogmatic law and justice. 

The fact is that politics cannot be prescribed, nor can it be carried out based on codes or petrified norms. Politics is one thing, and law, dogmatically conceived, is another, so it is not strange that the factual truth of politics differs from legal-dogmatic truth. 

This is an astonishing assertion; however, the fact is that what is periodically legitimized by the people through voting is political-factual truth, not dogmatic-legal truth. From the opposite perspective, the politician, being a citizen with a distinct social role, carries both a bonus and a burden: the bonus is the ability to express oneself with guaranteed immunity, but the burden is the need to submit to a direct and universal popular judgment in each electoral process. One cannot disregard, much less despise, the importance and weight that this fact has for democracy, especially in a state that calls itself a democratic rule of law, as is the case in Brazil. 

Well then! If the "lords of the law," who, despite being well-educated, were neither prepared nor legitimized for politics, now want to define the factual truth arising from it, let them at least recognize that, in the context of political processes, legal concepts such as guilt and intent, error and fraud, mistake and bad faith, take on connotations in gradations different from the strictly dogmatic content imposed by the law, which is often blind to social facts and out of step with... timing of the circumstances. 

It is high time to refute the presumptuous and arrogant idea that Brazil needs "saintly men" because everyone else is corrupt. What the country needs is reasonableness, an interpretation of the law based on common sense, from the investigation, throughout the course of the process, to the conviction, and finally to the serving of the sentence. That is how justice is done.

Why should it be assigned, prima facieShould more credence be given to testimony obtained through a plea bargain than to the word of someone who hasn't even been formally accused? Doesn't it become clear that accepting such a fact means automatically consenting to the absurdity of suppressing a constitutional principle as relevant as the presumption of innocence, based on the word of someone who is already undoubtedly a criminal? 

We must put an end to the hypocrisy of claiming that acting reasonably means condoning impunity, that force is more effective than due process, that the reasoning of a few enlightened individuals is more refined than the reasoning of the people, expressed through voting. After all, is Brazil a democracy or a ministerial-judicial aristocracy? What do we want to achieve: justice in specific cases or vigilantism for the imperfections of politics, imperfections whose origins lie in the structural form of the Brazilian State, far beyond a judicial process?

But what will be the solution to this problem, to revive PEC 37? No, not if the reason is pure retaliation. To eliminate the Public Prosecutor's Office or suppress its constitutional prerogatives? Far from it. No one should doubt the importance of the Public Prosecutor's Office to the Republic, nor question the relevance of the Judiciary to the functioning of the State. 

On the other hand, it is urgent that an end be put to media attempts to label the country's institutions with the stigma of criminalization. Immense economic groups, veritable communication cartels, are behind these attacks, with the purpose of expanding their networks of co-optation and strengthening their already substantial and lucrative ventures. 

From a legal standpoint, the solution to the dilemma is simple. Investigate whoever needs to be investigated, but without invading the lives of those who, in fact, do not deserve to have their lives scrutinized. Do not publicize accusations about someone who has not even had the right to know the content of what they will have the legal prerogative to contest. Do not label anyone as a criminal before a conviction resulting from a fair trial. 

From a political standpoint, a relatively greater effort is needed. Without conflicting with the competencies of branches of government and institutions, a political reform should be pursued decisively and openly, because it is in the country's electoral system, especially regarding corporate financing of electoral campaigns, where contradictions reign, juxtaposing good politics on one side and nefarious politics on the other.

 Therefore, it must be recognized that there is no alternative but to support the calling of a plebiscite authorizing the establishment of a specific National Constituent Assembly, with sole and exclusive deliberative power over Political Reform. 

Given the national conspiracy, it's either this way or it won't happen at all. To argue otherwise, whether with legal sophistry or ideological reverberations, is pure hypocrisy from those who don't think about Brazil, who find happiness in the moral and legal decay of the country, who root for underdevelopment and the eternal submission of this Latin American giant to the economies of the northern hemisphere and the international financial market.

Just as crucial as political reform is regulating the limits of action for these private media oligopolies in the country, but that's a topic for another article.