An ideologically false persecution

Months ago, the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor's Office (MPF), through its celebrity member Deltan Dallagnol, stated that it was "convinced" of Lula's guilt in a bizarre PowerPoint presentation that presented no evidence whatsoever. The image of the bumbling prosecutor's slide went viral online and became the ultimate symbol of the excessive (and sometimes unwarranted) effort to imprison the former president, who was leading in the polls. This week, the MPF again used a term that reinforces the fallacy of guilt without evidence and confuses the less attentive citizen (and voter): according to them, the receipts presented by Lula are undoubtedly "ideologically false."

The receipts in question pertain to the apartment next to the one where Lula currently lives in São Bernardo do Campo (SP). According to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF), Lula is the real owner of the property, which was allegedly acquired by the construction company Odebrecht as a quid pro quo for favors in contracts. Initially, it is important to emphasize that no actual illegality was found in the documents presented by the defense: the signatures of Glaucos da Costamarques match the original and are addressed to Dona Marisa, the legal representative of the lease. As far as is known, the documents are materially authentic and have not been forged.

This is where the term "ideological" comes in. According to criminal law doctrine, a document can be false, even if materially flawless, when the fact that generates the document's reliability is demonstrably unfounded. In other words, to declare the documents ideologically false, the Public Prosecutor's Office would have to have material proof that Lula was the actual owner of the property and that the apartment in question was the result of illicit activities carried out by the former President. But the Public Prosecutor's Office lacks material evidence, relying instead on old convictions and some circumstantial evidence. One of the reasons cited, for example, was the allegation that the amounts were not included in Lula's family's budget control spreadsheet.

Without evidence, the Public Prosecutor's Office did not indict Lula for falsifying documents, but reported an "incident of falsification," meaning suspicion that the crime had occurred. Therefore, we see here the great inconsistency of the accusation: while they announced that the documents were "beyond a doubt" false, the prosecutors made no accusation whatsoever of the reported crime. To make matters worse, they requested an expert analysis to try to find material flaws in the documents, given the impossibility of them themselves declaring them inadmissible in full accordance with the law.

Obviously, before the conclusion of the audit – which, it should be noted, has not even been authorized yet – a statement like the one given by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office is unsubstantiated and irresponsible, but unfortunately it is already generating the expected effects. The mainstream media has already widely reported the fact; and the "ideologically false" label has already sounded like "false documents" to a large part of Brazilian citizens. It is difficult to believe that there is no connection between an innocuous matter and the attempt to discredit the candidate who is leading by a wide margin in all the electoral polls for 2018.

To say there is no room for doubt while simultaneously requesting expert analysis and accusing the defense of presenting false documents, without, however, indicating what the actual wrongdoing would be, is more of the same from a Federal Public Prosecutor's Office that accuses with conviction, ignores evidence, and tirelessly exposes the ideology of its members in the media and on social networks. With each electoral poll, a new accusation: this has been the modus operandi of an institution with the status of a branch of government, and of its prosecutors who, incidentally, have already publicly expressed their desire to run for office in 2018.