Comment by whycome
6 hours ago
> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement
But, his dad:
> Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted by Brazil's Supreme Court for plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat
I don’t see how to read it any other way. Explain?
The Brazilian Supreme Court is completely out of control and its judgements mean nothing. It's not like the American Supreme Court that only arbitrates constitutional matters. Look at the recent history of it and you'll find judges on it using the police as their personal enforcers, randomly imprisoning people who criticize them, high levels of outright corruption and Lula's personal lawyer being appointed to it. Think about it: would the US Supreme Court personally convict someone of a crime? No, they only hear appeals, there is no such thing as someone directly imprisoned by a single supreme court judge in America. The Brazilian court also interferes directly in elections - in this case one of them ordered that voting be extended for hours after it had already been closed and the ballot boxes sealed for no good reason.
Basically, in Brazil the Supreme Court appears to be directly in charge of the police, and they can and do issue whatever "rulings" they want to impose their will on whatever or whoever they feel like, with no appeals possible. Including elected politicians.
I expect this HN thread to be a disaster zone of badly informed takes, but the Brazilians I know consider Brazil to be a dictatorship and this election to have been stolen. It's a sad day.
Thank you so much for this post. I've been saying the same thing as you, and people in this thread are already telling me to check myself into a mental institution.
Bolsonaro was the last chance we had to fix this. The plan was to impeach those judges and then restrict the court to purely constitutional matters, like the US supreme court. That little project is pretty much done now. We'll be lucky if we can impeach Alexandre de Moraes. It's over.
In Brazil, judges are gods. An actual lawyer told me this, once.
There is this narrative I heard from a Brazilian near me that the Supreme Court in Brazil is political and rotten to the core.
Check this article, use Google translate if needed https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punhal_Verde_e_Amarelo
The Supreme Court in Brazil can be as rotten of political as it wants, to make a plan to assassinate political rivals is just completely unacceptable.
And before someone tries to defend the bolsonaros by saying they were not involved in this, don't use a defense that they themselves did not use. The defense that Flávio Bolsonaro said about the incident was "thinking of killing someone is not a crime".