By a whooping 1.5% difference, we haven’t got a mob boss on the head of the executive power, with an aligned congress and the capacity of putting 2 judges on the supreme court and get a majority there.
So… whew… our democracy will only die slowly now. Beats dying quickly.
A whopping 10 million more people voted for Lula in this second turn of the election, and he had a 4 million voters lead on Flávio. That’s not a bad number. Now our job is to push the government in prosecuting all the mayors and secretaries involved in undermining the election.
Lula has been mired in corruption charges out the wazoo. Now, it turns out that at least some of them were a result of a corrupt, right-wing judiciary colluding against him, so his initial conviction was rightly overturned. But he was facing a lot of charges, and they were not necessarily all made up. Regardless, they were all swept away, just like that, meaning he has neither been found guilty or innocent of most of the charges of corruption against him.
Among all the people in as populous a country as Brazil, you’d think you’d be able to find a better candidate than an unpopular geriatric, who, rightly so or not, has had an incredulous amount of accusations of corruption against him.
But even if Lula was the second-worst possible candidate in all of Brazil, he is still many, many orders of magnitude better than the candidate he ultimately ran and won against. There’s no comparison.
The government made a new law making it impossible to judge politicians for corruption, and the Supreme Court decided that it applies retroactively to Lula, making it so no judgement was considered valid.
The way I’m interpreting it is that the charges were dismissed or retracted before they went to trial. The same thing can happen in the US.
For reference, Brazil uses a different legal philosophy (Civil Law) than most of the US and English-speaking countries (Common Law) so there are differences in how things work compared to the US, but presumption of innocence is also a feature in that philosophy, and specifically codified into law there from what I see on wiki.
Half of the Supreme court is involved in a corruption scandal, while he is papering over the problem; Half of the Congress is involved on that same scandal and some half in another large scandal, and he didn’t direct the police to investigate (he and the Supreme Court are the only ones that can); We have a new law mandating that common crimes from politicians can only be judge by a court that has no judge, and he was one of the main creators of it… The list goes on and on.
Until there are modern regulations on modern media, it will continue to be “random person” vs. “empty corporate suit”. You can buy a lot of propaganda with a blank check.
By a whooping 1.5% difference, we haven’t got a mob boss on the head of the executive power, with an aligned congress and the capacity of putting 2 judges on the supreme court and get a majority there.
So… whew… our democracy will only die slowly now. Beats dying quickly.
A whopping 10 million more people voted for Lula in this second turn of the election, and he had a 4 million voters lead on Flávio. That’s not a bad number. Now our job is to push the government in prosecuting all the mayors and secretaries involved in undermining the election.
And banning facebook before the next election.
So the good guys won but didn’t win hard enough for your tastes.
Just take the W and have a nice night. Now there’s an opportunity for improvement, that’s a good thing.
Look at the United States.
Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020.
And remember the cheering, and the relief, and the way people felt on that day.
Never forget that day.
There’s some differences. Bolsonaro was actually arrested, while the US was too afraid to arrest Trump.
Yup that’s a failed democracy.
It was indeed a good day.
It later got squandered, sure. But that day was good.
I spent the entire day dancing, so visceral was my relief. I know I was not the only one
Any good guy was long gone before the candidates were selected.
Still, it’s better than Flavio winning.
Alas, “the least-worst candidate who had a plausible chance of winning” is generally the best outcome for most democracies.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Or the “well he’s okay I guess”, in this case.
He’s far from ok, though. Our democracy is dying, in large part because of him.
He is just way less worse than that other guy.
Can you please explain? I haven’t been following what’s been going on in Brazil very closely.
Lula has been mired in corruption charges out the wazoo. Now, it turns out that at least some of them were a result of a corrupt, right-wing judiciary colluding against him, so his initial conviction was rightly overturned. But he was facing a lot of charges, and they were not necessarily all made up. Regardless, they were all swept away, just like that, meaning he has neither been found guilty or innocent of most of the charges of corruption against him.
Among all the people in as populous a country as Brazil, you’d think you’d be able to find a better candidate than an unpopular geriatric, who, rightly so or not, has had an incredulous amount of accusations of corruption against him.
But even if Lula was the second-worst possible candidate in all of Brazil, he is still many, many orders of magnitude better than the candidate he ultimately ran and won against. There’s no comparison.
Thank you!
I assumed Brazil’s judicial system used the same presumption of innocence as the US. How does it work in Brazil?
The government made a new law making it impossible to judge politicians for corruption, and the Supreme Court decided that it applies retroactively to Lula, making it so no judgement was considered valid.
The way I’m interpreting it is that the charges were dismissed or retracted before they went to trial. The same thing can happen in the US.
For reference, Brazil uses a different legal philosophy (Civil Law) than most of the US and English-speaking countries (Common Law) so there are differences in how things work compared to the US, but presumption of innocence is also a feature in that philosophy, and specifically codified into law there from what I see on wiki.
Half of the Supreme court is involved in a corruption scandal, while he is papering over the problem; Half of the Congress is involved on that same scandal and some half in another large scandal, and he didn’t direct the police to investigate (he and the Supreme Court are the only ones that can); We have a new law mandating that common crimes from politicians can only be judge by a court that has no judge, and he was one of the main creators of it… The list goes on and on.
Thank you for the explanation!
Until there are modern regulations on modern media, it will continue to be “random person” vs. “empty corporate suit”. You can buy a lot of propaganda with a blank check.