—Ulisses Levy Silvério dos Reis, The Federal University of the Semi-Arid Region – UFERSA, and Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, The Federal University of Minas Gerais
The 2018 general elections put the Brazilian political scenario in the center of the global debate on illiberal governments and democratic erosion. Jair Bolsonaro, a former Army officer who was a legislator for almost thirty years, won the election with a political platform based on, amongst other radical viewpoints, the glorification of the 1964-1985 dictatorship. The regime was responsible for numerous illegal actions against the opposition, such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture. A wide range of fundamental rights were ignored or breached in that period of time. The crimes against humanity that were committed are well documented in the files of the National Truth Commission. In addition, the regime enacted laws that facilitated its objectives of persecuting political opponents.[1]
The absence of true efforts on institutional reforms, an aspect of transitional justice, is a hallmark of the Brazilian transition.[2] Even with the Brazilian redemocratization in 1985 and the enactment of the 1988 Constitution, legislation previously adopted remained in force. The problem is that part of this array of acts and decrees is embedded in authoritarianism. The totality of the pre-1988 legislation, however, does not share those features. The National Tax Code and the Criminal Code, for example, are acts that were enacted long before 1988 and are generally in accordance with the current constitution. The situation is different, though, for other provisions, such as part of the Administrative Law statutes, the 1979 Amnesty Law, and provisions dealing with the Military Justice system. Yet, one of the main examples of a discrepancy is the National Security Law, approved by Act 7.170 of 1983.
From the beginning of Bolsonaro’s government, his aides initiated a process of persecuting critics using the National Security Law. The first Minister of Justice of the current government, Sergio Moro, the former federal judge that imprisoned ex-President Lula da Silva, was responsible for using this legislation in an unprecedented way, prompting 28 investigations. In 2020, with his replacement by André Mendonça, this metric increased and 51 investigations were launched on the basis of the National Security Law. When compared to the few uses of that legislation in the years before Bolsonaro’s administration, the numbers demonstrate a paradigm shift in Brazil.
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