MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Cristina Kirchner leads call to free ex Brazil president Lula da Silva
Human rights activists, lawmakers, trade unionists, artists and scientists together with Cristina Kirchner signed a petition published in the Pagina 12 daily Presidential frontrunner Alberto Fernandez and running-mate Cristina Kirchner led calls by dozens of Argentine personalities on Tuesday to free Brazil's jailed leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Human rights activists, lawmakers, trade unionists, artists and scientists signed a petition published in the left-leaning Pagina 12 daily.
They included Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Estela Carlotto and the leader of the Families of the Disappeared, Lita Boitano.
“It is a very big clamor for freedom in the face of an injustice, such as the detention and conviction of Lula da Silva, which implies that Brazil continues to be in a state of emergency,” said Nicolas Trotta, the rector of the Metropolitan University for Education and Labor, one of the organizers of the petition.
Fernandez, the favorite to unseat President Mauricio Macri in upcoming elections, visited Lula last month in Curitiba prison in southern Brazil where he is serving a nearly nine-year sentence for corruption and money laundering.
Fernandez blasted President Jair Bolsonaro last week as “misogynist, racist and violent” after the Brazilian leader said a leftist victory in October elections would spark an exodus of Argentines to Brazil.
Lula, who was the favorite to win last year's presidential election in Brazil before he was jailed, has continued to insist he is an innocent victim of a political conspiracy to thwart him returning to power.
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Read all commentsIf the comments made by the Fernandez/Fernandez candidates in respect of freeing Lula - entirely a Brazilian matter - were made in respect of situations arising in Argentina, the inmediate reaction would be “outsde intervention in our local problems is totally unacceptable”. I would therefore strongly suggest that this same line of thought be followed by F&F if they don't want to hear reactions from other countries on their ways of proceding, on whatever matters these may be.
Aug 21st, 2019 - 12:28 pm +1'Leaks prove Lula conspiracy victim in Brazil'
Aug 21st, 2019 - 11:16 am -1Lula's lawyers vow to take 'politically-motivated' case to UN to annul prison sentence, investigate conspiring officials.
Lula's lawyers said they would take the ''politically-motivated'' case to the UN Committee of Human Rights in a bid to annul Lula’s prison sentence and launch an investigation on the role of public officials involved in the leaked conversations.
Lula was leading the opinion polls in the run up to the 2018 election.
Both Lula and Rousseff have called what has been going on in Brazil since 2016 impeachment a coup against elected leaders.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/leaks-prove-lula-conspiracy-victim-in-brazil-/1560775#
The Dark Side of the Investigation Meant to Clean Up Brazil
Aug 21st, 2019 - 10:09 pm -1“For decades, we had this clear narrative that in the 1980s, we transitioned from dictatorship to democracy, and made a clean break with that past,” Matias Spektor, a professor of international relations at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas university in São Paulo, told me. “Lava Jato revealed just how imperfect this transition was, that at the heart of our democracy, corrupt practices endemic to authoritarian regimes are still very pervasive—and now, the tragic irony of it all is we learn that a very small group of activist bureaucratic entrepreneurs [such as Moro and chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol] themselves used features of this dirty system to propel themselves into politics.”
“Scandals that involve judges are even more dangerous to democracies than scandals that involve other institutional actors, since the judiciary only derives its legitimacy from the claim to neutrality,” Donatella della Porta, a professor of political science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, and expert on corruption and anti-corruption campaigns, told me.
She said investigative journalism had raised awareness in some cases -- but that the other way these battles have been fought, with a mobilized judiciary leading the charge, usually has serious consequences.
“They divide public opinion, and politicians defend themselves by saying the judiciary has been politicized,” she said. “In Italy, this accusation was inaccurate, but in Brazil, it's been proved to be true.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/08/anti-corruption-crusades-paved-way-bolsonaro/596449/
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