Card out of the deck
Whether he likes it or not, Joaquim Barbosa will no longer be eligible to run for president of the Republic.
In a lengthy interview published this Sunday, the president of the Supreme Federal Court, Joaquim Barbosa, said that he will not be a candidate for president of the Republic in 2014. The reason: Brazil – according to him, still racist – would not be prepared to have its first black president. In reality, Barbosa withdrew from the game because he is the one who is not prepared to face a mission of that magnitude.
The Supreme Court Justice's technical impediment was also evident this past Sunday, with the discovery that he had established a company in the United States to acquire a property in Miami, whose headquarters are located in the official apartment he occupies in SQS 312, Brasília. According to Brazilian law, official residences can only be used for residential purposes.
"Without frills, without embellishments, and without fanfare," repeating an expression used by Barbosa himself when he took office as president of the highest court in the country, the concrete and objective fact is this: the president of the Judiciary in Brazil violated the law. Furthermore, according to the Civil Servant Statute and the Organic Law of the Judiciary, he could not be a partner in companies. A "very serious" situation, according to the president of the Association of Federal Judges, Nino Toldo, who advocates for a rigorous investigation into the case.
It's impossible to know if Barbosa actually intended to run for president in 2014. But he never stopped the speculation. On the contrary. He even said he was "flattered" by a Datafolha poll that gave him 14% of the voting intentions and, in a conversation about political reform with President Dilma Rousseff, he defended independent candidacies – that is, outside the traditional party framework and tailor-made for "saviors of the nation" like himself.
In the current situation, even if he wanted to, Barbosa could no longer participate in the game. He didn't take the necessary precautions with his assets, he mixed public (the official residence of the Supreme Court) with private (Assas JB Corp, which bought the apartment in Miami), and he was taken down before the starting whistle. In practice, Joaquim Barbosa is already a card out of the deck.