Federal deputy Deltan Dallagnol (Podemos-PR) had his mandate revoked by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) on Tuesday (16). According to the case’s rapporteur, Minister Benedito Gonçalves, the former prosecutor requested dismissal from the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) on November 3, 2021, when he had already been condemned by the National Council of the Public Ministry (CNMP). In addition, he was responsible for 15 other procedures in the MPF’s control body.
For the TSE minister, Deltan’s objective was to make a move to avoid falling under the Clean Record Law, that is, fraud, when there were already obvious signs that he could be exonerated for misconduct. If he had been punished in the disciplinary process, he would have been made ineligible – and therefore would not even have been a candidate.
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The former prosecutor, and now former deputy, led the notorious task force of the Lava Jato operation in Curitiba, acting in an arbitrary and persecutory manner, where he promoted all kinds of crimes and excesses.
Deltan’s entry into politics, as well as former judge Sergio Moro, was an attempt to escape accountability for the crimes committed during the operation. After the reports of The Intercept Brasilknown as Vaza Jato, the whole country got to know the entrails and schemes of the prosecutors who worked in Lava Jato in Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.
In my book “Lava Jato, uma conspiracy contra o Brasil” (2021) I analyze the phenomenon of lavajatismo as one of the mechanisms (alongside the apparatus of large media corporations) that boosted the spread of the reactionary discourse of anti-politics and, in particular, of hateful anti-PTism, fueling the anger and resentment of vast segments of the population, mainly sectors of the middle class, against politicians, Congress, the STF and other institutions — which are worn out, it is true -, but which will not be renewed and democratized by lavajatista punitivism, which only favored and opened the space for the consolidation of a neo-fascist current in the country.
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Bolsonaro and the generals would not have been victorious in 2018 without the decisive help of Lava Jato, which illegally prevented Lula from participating in the presidential elections — the PT leader was emerging as the clear favorite.
The complete dismantling of Lava Jato, with the punishment of Deltan and Moro, is an unfinished task, a demand of the process of resuming the democratic course. After all, as Minister Gilmar Mendes (STF) himself said, “Lava Jato is the mother and father of Bolsonarism”.
The confrontation with “Lavajatismo” is a component of the political effort of the left and the working class to defeat the project of neoliberal recolonization of the country.
Read more: Surrounded by the extreme right, Dallagnol says goodbye to the Chamber by attacking the TSE
Lavajatismo is an arm of the extreme right
Lavajatismo is an extreme right-wing current of opinion, which appeals to a discourse of a salvationist and authoritarian nature, attracting the support of the more affluent segments of the middle class and the Bolsonarist militant scum, grouped in movements such as MBL, Vem Pra Rua, Laços pelo Brasil, Right Curitiba, Movement Against Corruption and entities representing the judicial apparatus and the high federal bureaucracy.
Corporate and hereditary media bodies – mainly Rede Globo and Folha de São Paulo – present the Lava Jato crimes as simple deviations from the “positive route” of the operation in the fight against corruption in the interior of the Brazilian state. According to the pro-Lava Jato media, the experience was positive and that a balance of the operation cannot pave the way for the return of impunity for public agents. In other words, the same discourse in favor of lavajatismo, recycled by a softer tone after Vaza Jato’s revelations of the criminal methods practiced by the operation, headquartered in Curitiba.
:: TSE revokes the mandate of Deltan Dallagnol, former Lava Jato prosecutor ::
It is worth remembering that Lava Jato’s actions resulted in the criminalization of parties, companies and political leaders, which had as its greatest expression the unprecedented lawfare campaign against a Brazilian political leader – former President Lula -, convicted and imprisoned without evidence for 580 days .
The criminal mechanisms used by the operation commanded by Moro and Deltan violated the rule of law and the constitutional charter in every way: long “preventive” incarcerations of executives of public and private companies, forged accusations, illegal coercive conducts, filmed arrests, selective leaks to Rede Globo, falsification of documents, coercion and blackmail by the accused’s lawyers (see the case involving lawyer Tacla Duran), partnerships with spy and security agencies in the United States were some of the methods widely used by Car wash.
The Lava Jato operation also left a huge liability on the country’s economy: under the pretext of fighting corruption, it caused the implosion of entire economic sectors, affecting the civil construction industry, heavy infrastructure, the shipbuilding industry, the chemical sector and the production chain of oil and gas, causing the unemployment of millions of Brazilians and the reduction of the GDP in 2015 and 2016.
Deltan, crime and punishment
In the complex and sinuous history of Brazil, two categories of people are execrated and discarded in the processes of social and political conflicts: informers and executioners. It was like this in the Imperial period and, more recently, in the military dictatorship. No officer from the basement of the dictatorship reached the generalship, the Army itself took care to ostracize the military who participated in the apparatus of repression. It is true that they were granted amnesty and escaped punishment — the result of the transition process agreed with the liberal bourgeois opposition in the agony phase of the dictatorship, after the defeat of the campaign for direct elections.
In the case of the executioner of the “republic” of Curitiba, the top of the Justice system defended Deltan Dallagnol in an internal process of image purification and of reckoning with the excesses committed by Lava Jato.
The STF itself, which covered and even protected Lava Jato’s beleguins, is currently operating a kind of correction course, with the aim of avoiding its responsibilities for violations of the Constitution in the process of consummating the coup against the former mandate. -President Dilma Rousseff.
Therefore, Deltan was crushed and will still be crushed by the machinery of the Justice System, which also needs to go through a process of profound reform and democratization.
It remains to be seen what will happen to the current senator Sergio Moro, the head of lavajatista banditry.
*She is a journalist and collaborates in several progressive and left-wing media. He is the author of the books ‘The Politics Beyond the News and the War Declared Against Lula and the PT’ (2019), ‘The Exit is on the Left’ (2020), ‘Lava Jato, a conspiracy against Brazil’ (2021) and from ‘Brasil Sem Máscara – the Bolsonaro government and the destruction of the country’ (2022) — all by Kotter Editorial. He is a member of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Curitiba.
** Article originally published in Brasil de Fato PR.
*** This is an opinion piece. The author’s view does not necessarily express the editorial line of the newspaper Brazil in fact.
Editing: Lia Bianchini
