ricktanko

The growing international alarm over the political persecution unfolding in Brazil following the runoff election last Sunday should raise alarm in all capitals that rushed to recognize the election as free and fair. There is nothing fair about extending the polling station hours by two hours and suspending the cont of the votes during that window by the “victorious” candidate’s former lawyer turned judge after the electoral court refused to authorize that request.

Lula will face a Congress with the largest opposition controlled he has ever faced. Having now forced the opponent in the Brazilian presidential election, if Lula pursues the same path as Maduro after the opposition won control of the Venezuelan legislature with 2/3 majority in December 2015 what steps might we see in Brazil in the coming weeks and months? Before the new legislators took office, the outgoing government controlled legislature rushed through the appointment of 13 Supreme Court justices and 21 alternates. Lula already controls 9 of 11 in the STF. The Venezuelan Supreme Court then suspended elected representatives from Amazonas, depriving the opposition of its two-thirds majority. When the legislature seated the three opposition deputies, the judges declared it in “contempt.” That dispute became the justification for treating the legislature’s decisions as null and void. Throughout 2016, the Venezuelan STF equivalent blocked legislation, including an amnesty for political prisoners. It upheld Maduro’s emergency decrees despite parliamentary opposition and authorized him to submit the national budget to the court instead of Congress. Judges progressively transferred the elected legislature’s authority to themselves and the executive. Sounds familiar? The government also closed the other constitutional routes to change. Regional criminal courts issued injunctions against the presidential recall process; the electoral authority used them to suspend it in October 2016. Regional elections were postponed. Political imprisonment and repression raised the cost of resistance. In March 2017, the Supreme Court went further, announcing it would exercise parliamentary powers itself. Later that year, Maduro installed a parallel Constituent Assembly through an election boycotted by the opposition. It claimed supremacy over state institutions and assumed legislative powers, sidelining the parliament Venezuelans had actually elected. The legislature could still meet. Its members could still speak. But the regime had stripped away their ability to legislate, control spending and hold the executive accountable. That is how Maduro neutralized an electoral defeat by capturing judges, emergency rule, increased political persecution of the opposition, repression and, finally, a parallel legislature.