Requiem for the Federal Council

I read, reread, and three more times (a tribute to Amilton Bueno de Carvalho) the article in this 247 that, the day before yesterday (03/04), reported a request from the Federal Council of the OAB (Brazilian Bar Association) to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to remove from the agenda the actions discussing imprisonment after a second instance conviction. Although I haven't read the request, I rely on the article that established the reason for the request: for the Federal Council of the OAB to become informed about the matter under debate – which is being addressed in an action promoted by the federal entity itself.

It's sad to talk about others. I try not to – my father taught me, my mother always reminds me; but it's even sadder to try to understand the reason that leads a lawyer to justify the need to become familiar with the subject when the subject is the fundamental clause that enshrines, as a guarantee, the presumption of innocence and due process – both coexisting with the barrier of a final and unappealable judgment before the execution of corporal punishments can begin.

I don't know what happened. I know what didn't happen. The Federal Council lost its way in its beautiful history, ceasing to be a resistance. It diminished itself. It aligned itself with the (fifth?) column of those who assaulted the rule of law – with my most public apologies for the vivid and shameful remark, assuming that any lawyer committed to history does not distort the subject matter at hand, even from their time in academia.

To make a rough comparison, it would be like a Catholic refusing communion in order to first learn about the meaning of the Holy Trinity...

The fact is; the Federal Council requested it (and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court granted its request), which is not something one requests when discussing what is being discussed...

Would it be acceptable for a surgeon to postpone surgery in order to first check if their electrosurgical unit is sharp? Or if the operating room where they have been working for thirty years is aseptic?

These two issues are extremely important, but one would imagine they are resolved before the patient even enters the operating room.

The fact is: The slow agony to which the Supreme Court has led us, when the right wing's favorite media operation had a market-aligned objective (removing Lula from the political race), should have ended today. It won't, however, because the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association needs to understand the scope and meaning of a fundamental constitutional clause.

The country is going from bad to worse, and this misery stems from the lack of commitment of institutions that should have looked at legal doctrine with more care and respect. There is no justification for maintaining the (mis)interpretation that allowed the republic of the Paranaguá people to override the Constitution. The Federal Council knows this well – so much so that it filed a petition against this dogmatic deviation – but, to familiarize itself with the issue, it requested its removal from the agenda.

What suffering. We are the only country in the West that does not respect the constitutional limit on the execution of sentences established by the constituent legislator, insofar as we relativize the scope and meaning of final judgment.

What will come next? The preventive detention of Marielle's corpse, simply because a street in Paris is named after her? And if this detention is challenged with a habeas corpus, will there be those who will summarily deny the order in deference to the lack of a collegial principle?

Carlo Collodi, the creator of the puppet who wanted to be human, worked with wood that reflected humanity itself. I think that, looking at life on Earth today, more than a century after his death, he would have chosen to sculpt humanity rather than wood, seeking traces of humanity in it, assuming that we are redesigning the wheel and in its initial design it is square.

Quousque tandem?