Mendonça and Moraes turn Brazil’s Supreme Court into a game of truco as Fachin delays restoring order

Brazil’s Supreme Court has begun to resemble a card table, the article argues, with justices raising the stakes instead of restoring institutional restraint. It compares André Mendonça’s decision to suspend Federal Police Director-General Andrei Rodrigues with calling for a decisive move in truco, a Brazilian card game, in the hope of ending the contest quickly.

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illegally

Mendonça relied on a precedent created by Alexandre de Moraes, the article says, using a unilateral decision to remove Rodrigues after a party complaint from Novo. The decision came during an election campaign. In 2020, the PDT used a similar move to block Alexandre Ramagem from taking the same post after Jair Bolsonaro appointed him following Sérgio Moro’s resignation. Moraes granted an injunction then, and the full court upheld it.

The article questions Mendonça’s claim that the Federal Police had “illegally” monitored him. Producing an intelligence report, it argues, does not by itself prove that an operation took place. Intelligence gathering and operational activity are separate functions, meaning a report can describe a scenario without showing that the person involved was monitored or spied on. The central issue, it says, is how intelligence reports are used.

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extremely serious

The dispute has also drawn criticism from ten former Supreme Court presidents, who called the facts “extremely serious.” They asked Fachin to urgently schedule a public session so the full court could order a rigorous investigation. The article argues that the Court must urgently curb unilateral rulings and recover the gravity, honor and sense of duty associated with justice.

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public session so that the full court may order an immediate and rigorous investigation