Moraes and his inquiry is worse than AI-5 during Brazil’s military dictatorship – J. R. Guzzo

A new Institutional Act no. 5 (AI-5), the instrument of force used by the military regime to impose a dictatorship on Brazil that lasted more than 10 years – only more destructive, more perverse, and with worse purposes than those of the original model. 

Today’s AI-5 is the perpetual, unlimited and absolutely illegal inquiry that Justice Alexandre de Moraes commands against “anti-democratic acts”, using as his armed wing a Federal Police that no longer obeys the law and blindly obeys all your orders.

“Undemocratic act”, quite simply, is everything that the minister says is anti-democratic, as were the “subversive acts” of the generals’ regime. 

It’s the crowbar he invented to give himself the right to act outside the law.

Due to the need to defend “democracy”, he abolished the elementary requirement that a citizen can only be accused of crimes that are foreseen in the Penal Code and the rest of Brazilian legislation – and within the legal process, before justice.

The result is that the inquiry serves solely for Moraes to persecute those who fall on the list of enemies of his political project.

“There are still a lot of people to arrest”, he threatened, with the certainty of someone who does what he wants. No dictatorship official has said such a thing, ever – Moraes says and laughs.

In his last outbreak, he arrested four citizens in Espírito Santo who had not committed any crime – one of them was accused of “demonizing” the STF, which has no legal existence. 

He arrested businessmen. He arrested an indigenous chief. He ordered an electronic ankle bracelet.

He imposes a fine of R$23 million (US$4.32 million), or R$150,000 (US$28,183) per hour. 

Freezes bank accounts. Block wages. Orders the Federal Police to invade residences and offices at 6 am.

He does not comply with the law that gives the Public Ministry exclusivity in criminal prosecution.

Ignores official MP requests to close his inquiry or close one and open another on the same day.

Congress, the Armed Forces, and the cardinals of “civil society” accept everything.

Is this democracy, is it?

(Article by J. R. Guzzo published in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo on Dec. 18, 2022)

With information from Revista Oeste