“There was a prediction that the Forum would be emptied.” The minister’s sentence drew laughter and a long round of applause from the audience that was packed into the auditorium of the Faculty of Law of Lisbon. They were there to hear the closing speech.
The untold part of the story is that the auditorium was changed hours before the event, this Wednesday (3). It should have taken place in a much larger space, in the University’s rectory, where the enthusiastic audience certainly could not be described as a crowd.
Blame the general strike that paralyzed a large part of public services in the Portuguese capital, said Carlos Blanco de Morais, professor at the Lisbon institution, Portuguese organizer of the event. In addition to the hosts, the Lisbon Forum is the responsibility of IDP, an educational institution of which Gilmar is a founding partner, and the Brazilian FGV.
Without the political tension of recent years, the Forum gained speakers and registrants, according to official data, but lost the news weight that made it the most criticized legal event in the country in recent years. To a certain extent, it became what it should have been: just a day of debates in the legal area, with 70 panels and 432 debaters.
Even lunches, dinners and talks parallel to the event lost strength this year, according to journalists and frequent participants of the meeting, already a long-awaited and important date for the revenue of São Paulo’s tourism and services sector. At least in Portugal, Gilmarpalooza is not just a pejorative nickname.
There was a lot of talk about democracy, artificial intelligence, regulation of big tech and social networks. In the front row, Alexandre de Moraes, the only minister of the present besides Gilmar, to whom most of the speakers paid praise for the , demarcated the territory of a Judiciary immune to criticism.
At his side, Viviane Barci, his wife, , the case that generated an unprecedented institutional crisis between the Powers in Brazil. The Lisbon Forum, however, is an “event that remains, above all, academic”, stated Gilmar.
“[Um evento] which dialogues with the practice of law, management, politics, economics, regulation and productive activity”, declared the minister, anticipating details of the commemorative edition of 2027, when the Lisbon Forum turns 15 years old.
Listing suggestions that, according to him, should be accepted for next year, such as panels only in English, proof of its internationalization, and the elaboration of a “final document of the Forum, with specific goals and objectives to be pursued”.
Gilmar argued that, “eventually”, his event should stop being just the Lisbon Forum and “become called the Lisbon World Forum”.
“Modesty to the core”, declared the minister, triggering new laughter and a long round of applause from the audience, who did not notice the perhaps anglicism of the dean of the STF.
“We calmly receive the criticisms directed at the Forum, including those marked by hasty readings, misunderstandings or opportunism”, said the minister in his closing speech. “They too, in their own way, really contribute to increasing the visibility of the work built here”, he considered.
In the next sentence, however, he returned to the style with which he became known: “As a proverb says, which, I’m told, is Portuguese, ‘no one can escape being stoned by a crazy person or kicked by a donkey’.” Once again, the cramped auditorium, which took more than 15 minutes to give way to ambassador Raimundo Carreiro Silva, 77, burst into laughter and applause.
Leader of the “STJ bench”, as he himself described it on the first day of the event, the vice-president of the court, Luiz Felipe Salomão, blamed the elections for the low political voltage. “I don’t agree that there has been an emptying,” said the minister, listing off the top of his head the number of authorities present at the top of the national Judiciary.
“But we are in a difficult year, with the World Cup and elections coming up. It is very reasonable that parliamentarians are focused on the electoral period,” he said, adding to the list of busy TSE and TRE ministers. “It’s not just politicians”, declared Salomão, who is a professor at FGV and one of the event’s coordinators.
