Senator Ana Amélia, don't rejoice. The Supreme Federal Court supported the 1964 coup.

Last week, during the Senate session dedicated to discussing the opinion analyzing the validity or invalidity of the impeachment of suspended President Dilma Rousseff, Senator Ana Amélia, from the PP party of Rio Grande do Sul, uttered an infamous phrase that needs to be refuted in the name of truth, justice, and respect for the veracity of Brazilian history.

Ana Amélia said she was “very happy” to “be a coup plotter alongside ministers of the Supreme Court.” She said this because the president of the Supreme Court, Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, is presiding over the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff. The senator from Rio Grande do Sul tried to confuse the public by interpreting his presence in the plenary session as an endorsement of the impeachment process.

Ana Amélia, who must think she's smarter than smartness itself, in her attempt to confuse people, could have said that because Dilma is defending herself in the process, because her lawyer, José Eduardo Cardozo, is attending the Senate sessions dealing with the impeachment, by submitting petitions and making oral arguments, she is also validating the process.

Dilma, by defending herself, does not recognize the seriousness of the process, just as Lewandowski, by presiding over it, does not endorse it. Dilma and Lewandowski are participating in the impeachment process because the Senate, so far, has not supported the farcical thesis approved by the Chamber of Deputies last April. Therefore, they are participating under the premise that the Senate can act correctly and reject this farce.

It is not surprising, however, that Senator Ana Amélia sees Lewandowski's mere presence in the Senate Plenary as an endorsement of the thesis that triggered the impeachment process, that Dilma committed a crime of responsibility. After all, she is a member of the Progressive Party, the party of the 1964 coup, the party of the military dictatorship, successor to the National Renewal Alliance (Arena). And, as is known, she does not consider that there was a coup in 1964.

But it's not just the nature of the party that Senator Ana Amélia belongs to that led her to utter such infamy; it's her ignorance of Brazilian history. Yes, because the Supreme Court being represented in a coup process wouldn't mean anything even if Lewandowski were there supporting the impeachment – ​​when, in fact, he's there fulfilling his duty, just as Dilma is doing by facing the process – because the Supreme Court carries in its history the stain of having supported the classic coup of 1964.

Here, then, is a brief... class A message of history for Senator Ana Amélia, so that, by some miracle, she will stop uttering outrageous things and slapping the much-abused Brazilian democracy in the face.

In 1964, Alvaro Moutinho Ribeiro da Costa presided over the Supreme Federal Court (STF). In that capacity, the minister participated in and provided cover for the coup d'état that deposed the constitutional president João Goulart.

Between 3 and 4 a.m. on April 2 of that year, Ribeiro da Costa witnessed and gave his "constitutional" blessing to the inauguration of Congressman Ranieri Mazzilli as President of the Republic.

The presidency had been declared vacant, and the coup plotters announced that Goulart had left the country.

The coup plotters were tearing up the existing Constitution of 1946, and the president of the Supreme Federal Court was trumpeting that the deposition of João Goulart was constitutional.

Another episode of which the Supreme Federal Court has no reason to be proud is the deportation of Olga Benario to Nazi Germany in 1936. German, Jewish, communist, wanted in her country, Olga was pregnant. She was handed over by Brazil to the Gestapo.

Who handed it over: the Supreme Federal Court, in cahoots with Getúlio Vargas, who a year later would cancel the elections and establish the Estado Novo dictatorship.

By majority vote, even knowing of Olga's pregnancy, the court refused habeas corpus and expelled her. The reason: she was a "foreigner" and her continued presence in the country supposedly "compromised national security." Olga Benario was killed in 1942 in the gas chamber of the Bernburg concentration camp in Nazi Germany. She was 34 years old when the Supreme Federal Court sent her to her death.