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.
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!