Brazil's institutions are strong, public service is a 'prestigious and stable' career

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00:00Hello, everyone. I'm François Picard. Donald Trump's bid to overturn his electoral loss against

00:15Joe Biden in 2021 never did end with a trial. In Brazil, different story. The Supreme Court

00:22opening the final phase of the case against Trump's far-right ally, Jair Bolsonaro.

00:27Ahead, five days of testimony and deliberation in spite of political pressure both at home and abroad.

00:34Ellen Gainsford has more.

00:38Swaying with hands raised to the skies, they're praying for divine intervention for Brazil's

00:44former president, Jair Bolsonaro, as he awaits a decision of the country's Supreme Court.

00:50We can't see this kind of support throughout Brazil, but we worried that an injustice could

00:57be done. So we had to come here to the Supreme Court. We thank my father's supporters. We give

01:04him positive energy, which he needs right now. Currently under house arrest in this high-end

01:12housing complex in Brasilia, Bolsonaro is accused of planning a coup to remain in power after losing

01:18the 2022 presidential election. The alleged plot included a plan to poison his leftist rival,

01:26Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, and Lula's running mate, with their aim of installing two retired

01:33army generals to head the country ahead of fresh elections. Public opinion on the trial is split.

01:39This trial has simply divided the country, divided society into two classes, a class that is

01:47completely right-wing and one that is completely left-wing. But they forgot the people who are

01:51sometimes in the center, who want the country to grow, for it to develop.

02:00Bolsonaro supporters stormed the capital in January 2023, in violent scenes that echoed those in the

02:07U.S. two years earlier. Bolsonaro is accused of stirring up the unrest in order to unseat his

02:14rival. His case has drawn the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who's called the trial a

02:21witch hunt and slapped a 50 percent tariff on Brazil. Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing and claims the charges

02:30are politically motivated. Well, for more, let's go to the U.K. capital. Andresa de Souza Santos,

02:37is director at King's College London's Brazil Institute. Thank you for speaking this year on France 24.

02:46Hi, thank you for having me. The final phase of the trial has begun. You saw in that report

02:54a divided nation. Is there a silent majority for or against this trial?

03:03For the trial, in fact. And Bolsonaro still has his supporters and they have been like a consistent

03:1430 percent of the population that really supports him. They are very noisy and 30 percent of the

03:20population, but the majority of the population supports the trial.

03:26So the overall in favor of a trial, what we saw in the United States that it was long and deliberate,

03:35the time between January the 6th and the time when in the final year of Joe Biden's mandate that

03:41judicial proceedings finally were coming to something of a head. They were all stopped in their tracks by

03:48Trump's re-election. Why was justice swifter in Brazil?

03:56There's an interesting point to compare Brazil with the United States. And often enough, people

04:02do not think that institutions in a place like Brazil in the global south can be speedy and work

04:09well. But in fact, Brazil's institutions, and especially since 1988 with Brazil's current

04:16constitution, they have been very good. And public servants in Brazil is also a very prestigious

04:24and stable career, which recruits very good professionals. And so there is no reason to believe

04:31that institutions in Brazil should be slower or worse than in the US or any other country.

04:38The US where they've slapped sanctions on the president of the Supreme Court. They've also slapped

04:47tariffs. And they've statedly said that it's over this trial. The United States targeting Alexander

04:53de Mores, who addressed that pressure earlier in his opening statement. Let's take a listen.

04:58It is regrettable that another coup has been attempted in Brazil's Republican history,

05:07attacking institutions and democracy itself with the aim of establishing a state of emergency,

05:13a true dictatorship.

05:16Your reaction to that statement by this president of the Supreme Court, who's

05:23become an internationally known figure now.

05:29Yes, and that is a very difficult chapters in Brazil history, because it's unprecedented

05:38that another country applies trade sanctions on Brazil because of a domestic trial.

05:44So it is a very complicated foreign affairs issue, which was not supposed to be like that, because

05:52this is a trial that the Brazilian Supreme Court is doing against a crime that happened in Brazil. And this

06:00is all Brazilian politicians. For example, when one of the accusations against President Bolsonaro

06:11refers to 8th of January in Brazil. So this happened in Brazil as well. So it's very hard to understand

06:21this international intervention. And Brazil is dealing with that obviously the best way that is possible,

06:30which I guess is negotiating trade and trying to revert some of these sanctions. But above

06:36all of all, I think that the fact that the trial is going on, despite all these punishments, is also

06:43a commitment to what we discussed before with the institutions and the strengths of them in Brazil at this time.

06:52And you heard in that clip, he says, Alexander de Mourinho talks about another coup. Of course,

06:59he's referring to the fact that Brazil only became a democracy again in 1982. Is it because

07:05that memory of times of dictatorship is not so far off that public opinion in Brazil is

07:13behind the justice running its course here?

07:16The chapter of Brazil's military coup is complicated because the dictatorship in Brazil,

07:28different from other Latin American countries, for example, Argentina or Uruguay, there were very

07:34heavy trials. While in Brazil, it was a transition from military dictatorship to democracy, it was

07:41pacted. It was a smooth transition. So there were no trials. And the narratives of the military

07:50dictatorship in Brazil, they are not so concise. There are different appropriations of what happened

08:00during the military dictatorship and what happened afterwards. And there were confusion also about

08:07democracy in Brazil happening also during a time of decrease in social investment. So you have,

08:15in one hand, a democracy and the reestablishment of democracy in Brazil, post-military dictatorship.

08:22But you also have in the 80s what is so-called the lost decade, which was a decade that was very

08:29difficult financially in Brazil. So you have urban sprawl and you have the investment in social services. So a lot

08:35of people, they combine democracy with growth in violence, for example, calls for the comeback of

08:41the military dictatorship as a kind of social welfare time, which is, again, this appropriation of

08:49narratives and confusions of times and history in Brazil. But when we say now, like, this comeback of

08:58Q, this is used in different narratives, as they say. So some people like Bolsonaro will use the military

09:05for support to democracy, while, of course, in Brazilian history, the military did not

09:13figure as a group in support of democracy, but quite the contrary. So this is a complicated chapter in

09:21Brazil's history, exactly because of this pacted transition, the lack of a very strong trial.

09:27Just one final brief question. The president of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court in Brazil, which

09:35has a jurisdiction which is different from that of a lot of Western democracies in that they can

09:41sometimes initiate cases themselves. They don't just wait for cases to come up through the system.

09:50Does the Supreme Court have outsized power?

09:53This is actually a very good question because it's supposed to be the contrary. It's supposed

10:05to give politicians more power. So the idea is that a politician should have a freedom of speech, for

10:12example, and in the pursuit of ideas. So to make sure that politicians cannot always be

10:21brought to court, then this was a law was created that when it's a political crime, it should have to

10:32be initiated by the Supreme Court to avoid that every member of the parliament or something is brought

10:38to trial because of any kind of judge in a small jurisdiction would feel that they initiated

10:50something that is against the law or something like that. So to avoid that there are so many trials

10:55against politicians, then there is this kind of parliamentary immunity to justice. And then they need to be

11:02initiated by the Supreme Court in the sense that the Supreme Court would be a little bit more elective

11:06and filter to not involve politicians in all sorts of criminal charges. And that was to protect. So

11:18in the case of Bolsonaro, that's why it is initiated in the Supreme Court.

11:22Andresa D'Souza Santos, so many thanks for being with us from London.

11:28Thank you so much.

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