The operation mounted by the Federal Supreme Court in the Master case of its plenary session is, in all aspects, a process of drying out ice.
By only partially defrauding, but not without providing a certificate of good record to the confused minister in a statement riddled with corporatism, it is possible to stop the bloodletting to which it is subjected.
Such coagulation will only occur due to an uncontrollable factor: the eventual revelation of the size of the web and its size. According to this hypothesis, current among some ministers, the damage is so great that the agreement is inevitable.
After all, so far in the scandal, some are worse than others. Major players in the financial market, regulatory bodies, the Federal Audit Court, the Federal Police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court and a still opaque variety of politicians.
This explains the caution in the government and Congress, despite mute admissions of fear of the systemic impacts of the crisis.
Returning to the Supreme Court, even if Toffoli ends up falling due to new discoveries, the focus will immediately shift to the million-dollar contract between his wife’s office and the Master.
If Toffoli was seen with a certain amount of contempt in Congress, particularly in the Senate that has been sharpening its knives to stop a STF minister since forever, Moraes inspires a mix of reverential fear and hatred. If exposed, the pressure will rise.
With all this, the Supreme Court risks seeing its discussion of national problems, formed since it judged and condemned federal Lulismo in the case of the monthly allowance in 2012.
For better or for worse, the court assumed an unprecedented role, in the political wind that inspires analysis to this day, as in the case of second-instance arrest.
In its favor, it was also led to this by a silent Congress and focused on lucrative micropolitics, in addition to an Executive shaken by successive crises, such as the petrolão, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and the scandals under Michel Temer (MDB), the chaos of (PL).
The zenith of this process was drawn from the fake news case in 2019, opened ex officio by Toffoli, then president of the court. The power wielded by the case’s rapporteur, Moraes, has no parallel in history.
If he committed reported abuses, it is not unfair to credit the minister’s actions with a central role in containing the coup moods embodied in Bolsonaro, now in prison. This work, in a similar way although for different reasons than what happened with Lava Jato.
The largest anti-corruption operation in the history of its actors’ political motivations, and Toffoli himself was instrumental in dismantling its most eye-catching results. Now, of course, it is different, but the resulting policy will be more attacks in the case of the coup plot.
This alone guarantees the impact that all leaders say the Master case will not have on the October election. Here, the bill falls into the lap of the president (PT).
Firstly, because he happily embraced the relationship with the STF as a counterpoint to a more hostile Congress, which has worked so far. It is no coincidence that in the opening salvo of his tariff war with Brazil, Donald Trump between the Judiciary and the Executive when demanding amnesty for Bolsonaro.
But every bonus has a cost, and damage to the court’s image spills over to the government. In this sense, candidacies from (PL) and possible rivals to the center-right tend to gain points — in an election that is currently being decided by the mechanical eye, any decimal place matters.
Obviously, this reasoning only survives if members of the opposition do not disappear. What is known is that we are seeing the rapid erosion of a framework of power, whose restoration is more than uncertain — it seems unlikely that a code of conduct will solve the problem, with the option of agreement always remaining.
