Nassif: JB could have been great, but he was just bad.

247 According to Luis Nassif of the GGN website, Joaquim Barbosa had everything he needed to make history as President of the Supreme Federal Court, but he lacked the emotional strength to do so. Read more:

Joaquim Barbosa, who could have been great, but was only bad.

When the outsider entered the STF (Supreme Federal Court), the formal authorities accepted him with superior condescension. The outsider had a resume, spoke several languages, and had developed important theses on inclusion.

But he was an outsider. He didn't come from a family of lawyers, he liked the informal atmosphere of bars, he had very few friends, and he never tried to please anyone in his life.

He achieved everything through sheer force of will, depending solely on himself.

He had everything it took to make history, dismantling backroom deals, stripping away the formalism and hypocrisy of many judges, subverting ways of seeing the world, bringing to the Supreme Court the spirit of contemporaneity and the proud mark of his race and of those who conquered everything without ever giving in.

But something was missing, some piece in his emotional system, that turned him into a kind of Mike Tyson in a toga, a gigantic and uncontrollable force haunted by a thousand inner demons that ultimately prevented him from becoming great.

What shaped this rough, rude, cruel emotional side is unknown. Life's hardships often build great characters; but they also mold cruelty, a permanent vengeance against anything and anyone who dares to stand in their way.

This was the case with Joaquim Barbosa.

His world had become a small, confined island, surrounded by an ocean infested with sharks intent on harming him, every contrary action seen as a threat to what he had achieved.

Each trial became a war to be won at any cost, even by withholding evidence if necessary. The courtroom was an arena populated by bloody gladiators awaiting the public's thumbs-down for the final slaughter of their enemies. And everyone was an enemy: the defendant to be condemned, the colleague who dared to disagree with any position, the lawyer who refuted their arguments, the journalist who criticized them.

Hate as lifeblood

I have rarely seen such intense hatred in people, anger driving all their actions, and such exacerbated egocentrism that they treat any dissenting voice as an enemy to be annihilated.

Perhaps in José Serra, who, in any case, has always been clever enough to act through intermediaries.
Joaquim Barbosa never resorted to hypocrisy or malicious trickery. Like Tyson, he always went out there with his chest puffed out, dishing out blows around the world. What motivated him wasn't dishonesty, the lust for power, perhaps a little the pursuit of popularity, but above all, giving vent to hatred, always hatred as a vital sap.

And this brute – in the broadest sense of the term – was transformed into a white media champion in the political contest. Emotionally crude, he bought into the game of flattery, of being "the boy who changed Brazil."

For a time, he played the double game of someone forged in the battles of life and the formality of hierarchical power. He confronted the legal world by intimidating formal minds with the unbridled truculence of street and barroom arguments; and he asserted himself with his beach friends with the condescension of those who had risen in life but had not forgotten their origins.

Above all, he had the approval of the media, which he earned without asking for it, but which allowed him to be heard in the streets.

With such power, he began to break dogmas, but in the worst possible way, trampling on rights, being aggressive to the point of boorishness in an eminently formal environment.

The lawyers who tamed the beast

It fell to two extremely affable lawyers to dismantle the beast.

One of them, Celso Antônio Bandeira de Mello, the gentle Bandeira, unanimously respected in the legal world for his courteous firmness, definitively defined him: "He is a bad man."

Another, Luiz Roberto Barroso, the man of Rio de Janeiro's high society, the enlightened figure who, even as a lawyer, refreshed the Supreme Court by defending contemporary theses, reacting to Joaquim's unprecedented aggressiveness without losing his composure or firmness.

And that's when Joaquim Barbosa's emotional strategies for dealing with the obsequiousness of the legal world and the rudeness of the bars began to crumble.

In the legal world, truculence ceased to intimidate; on the contrary, it began to be met with increasing impatience from peers. In the world of bars, instead of only applause, it began to be met with boos.

Gradually, media groups realized that Barbosa had become a useless, heavy burden, a showcase where the bias of the AP 470 trial was on display. With his irrationality, he was turning the defendants in the case into victims of the most blatant arbitrariness.

In the Supreme Court, his only influence was over Luiz Fux.

All that remained for him was the support of the mob, that most uninformed segment of society, which applauds lynchings, defends the law of retaliation, and rejoices in any scapegoat. And, in contrast, the jeers of the savagery he aroused on the opposing side.

On both sides of the counter, the bad man could only bring out the worst feelings in admirers and critics alike.
The final scene

The more isolated he became, the more Joaquim Barbosa radicalized his arbitrary actions.

It gained some new lease on life thanks to changes in the procedures of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) that prevented habeas corpus petitions from being filed against decisions of the president of the court, an initiative of former president César Peluso, who assumed that the presidency would never be occupied by an unsuitable person.

The abuses were so blatant that a gesture completely outside the rules – by José Genoíno's lawyer, invading a session of the Supreme Court to question him – did not even merit a condemnation from the Justices. On the contrary, it encouraged the defense of Marco Aurélio de Mello, because he knew it to be an act of absolute desperation, from someone who saw laws and legal procedures trampled by the insanity of a judge.

And then the powerful, the unbeatable Joaquim Barbosa asked for retirement and, yesterday, withdrew from AP 470, trying to play the victim, claiming to be the target of political manifestos and threats from the lawyer.

He leaves at the very moment when the Supreme Court was about to put an end to his arbitrary actions.

The Jornal Nacional (Brazilian news program) offered a terse note, which surprisingly ended with a phrase from the lawyer who confronted him: "Now, the Supreme Court can once again judge impartially." From his peers, he received nothing, not even a single greeting. Perhaps in the final session he will be graced with the relieved praise of some colleague who adheres to the formalities of the Supreme Court.

Leaving leaves a huge sense of waste. Waste in relation to what could have been achieved in the renewal of the Supreme Court, in the affirmation of racial diversity, in the recognition of individual effort.

All that remains is the image of a wicked and unprincipled man, whose ultimate goal lies not in history, but in taking revenge on a simple lawyer who dared to face his wrath.