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 Brazilian judge sets maximum of 2,400 reais (US$ 887) to those granted amnesty – so says the headlines of the newspaper Estadão (O Estado de S. Paulo). A Federal Court decided recently that the government not authorize any monthly installment payment above R$ 2,400 to politically persecuted individuals given amnesty.
According to the paper, the order was issued by Judge Paulo Alberto Jorge, from the 1st Federal District Court of Guaratinguetá, in the Paraíba Valley, state of São Paulo.
The judge recognized a preliminary injunction of a civil action by the Attorney General’s Office against the “mayhem of millions in compensation that is causing the bleeding in the state’s coffers and favoritism in the speed at which some applications get through in detriment to others.”
According to the judge, “as just as it may be to establish their earnings - had they been in activity- as the criteria for compensations and to compute monthly installments, one should not lose sight that, for all the injustice caused to the politically persecuted, now granted amnesty, reparations cannot generate social injustice of equal burden, or even greater.”
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Would journalist Carlos Heitor Cony (R$ 1.4 million (US$ 517,000) in compensation, plus a monthly pension of R$ 19,000 (US$ 7,000)); newspaper publisher Hélio Fernandes (R$ 1.4 million (US$ 517,000)) in compensation, plus R$ 14,700 (US$ 5.400) pension), or Lula’s Chief of Staff, José Dirceu (single installments of R$ 59,400 (US$ 22,000) renounce their fat rewards for disservices rendered to the nation, in the name of a “social injustice of equal burden”?
Has anyone heard of ever, in the course of history, Power relinquishing its own power? Only by way of revolutions - and usually bloody, which is the last thing that the Conys, Hélios Fernandes’, and Josés Dirceus of the world hope for in the post-1964.
José Dirceu clamored for revolution while at guerilla training in Cuba. Today, he’s well settled in inside spacious offices at the Planalto Palace, and his only hope is for status quo preservation.
Cony or Fernandes, whose profession’s primary principle is ethics, can very well contend that their “reign as maharajas” (term often used in Brazil to allude to the privileged who live off the common people’s sacrifices) are perfectly legal.
In fact they are. However, journalists are sufficiently lucid to understand that legality doesn’t rhyme with ethics. Actually, in most times, it rhymes with immorality, impunity, venality. Yet, for the guerilla man, ethics rhymes with anything, as long as it leads to power.
Nor does the Nation’s President – who retired at 42, a la the scoundrels we hear about on a daily basis, who could care less about wasting away the state’s funds for their own benefit – find himself these days concerned with social injustices.
President Lula, who retired without even completing 25 years of service, today has R$ 3.862,57 (US$ 1427.15) in benefits, as a result of the Amnesty Law, despite never being granted amnesty. For a very simple reason: he was never persecuted.
To merit such a bonus package, all he did was spend a few days in a special room, without bars, at the Federal Police. Love, proudly and faithfully, the home land! Lula! Never will a country such as this exist!
Not to mention that every month, any Brazilian worker with a salary above a meager R$ 1,058 (US$ 391) pays between 15% and 27.5% in income tax.
The brave from 1964, many of whom three-punch revolutionaries, as Che Guevara used to say – one punch to open the mouth, two to shut – are superior to the commoners.
They are exempt from any “bite from the lion” (analogous to Uncle Sam’s IRS earnings share, which in this case deals with reparations’ earnings).
Paulo Alberto Jorge is the judge who ordered the Army to release the repression archives. (Again, I will believe it when I see it. Today, the “repressed” don’t want to hear about the subject).
In the case of those granted amnesty, the judge established that Justice Minister Márcio Thomaz Bastos “not confer any payment” in the amount higher than the Social Security ceiling.
The excess will be deposited in legal escrow. Will the Justice Minister dare to subtract 1,462.57 reais (US$ 540.30) from the Nation’s Supreme Mandatory? Still, I wouldn’t bet money on it.
The judge wants to review those reparations where a single installment is above R$ 30,000 (US$ 11,084). To the “retroactive heroes”, whose compensations reached two million reais (US$ 739,000), the magistrate’s intention must sound like an injustice that clamors vengeance from the heavens.
Obviously, they will allege vested rights, the very same vested rights that for decades - and not five years ago - the government has crumpled when the issue is ransacking the pockets of defenseless inactive federal employees, denying them exemption in social security contribution and wage parity with state workers in activity.
According to the judge, “the monthly installments are inappropriate for those who today, far from suffering the consequences of arbitrary and abusive actions by the government, have rebuilt their lives and, as in the case of many such beneficiaries, have enriched with this sort of payment.”
For Attorney General João Gilberto Gonçalves Filho, who proposed the measure, “in a nation where children starve to death, it is brutally unconstitutional to allow abundant pensions to people who receive abundant salaries. The payments are an affront to the Constitution.”
The government, while diligently compensating the bandits who once wanted to install a communist dictatorship in the country, is far from being preoccupied in paying what is owed to citizens that are dying in herds, without ever seeing a shadow of what is legitimately due to them.
In January 2003, Union, States, and Municipalities were in default by a total of 101.871 petitions, amounting to R$ 8.5 billion (US$ 3.14 billion) in debt.
The Chief Justice of the High Court of Labor (TST), Francisco Fausto, updates the figure: today, petitions around the country add up to R$ 12 billion (US$ 4.4 billion).
Petitions, explains the judge, are a product of legal orders already carried out, deemed final, and, therefore, beyond the possibility for appeal.
And - based on the prior administrations’ practices - beyond the possibility of ever being paid.
Awaiting state intervention by the federal government, or municipal intervention by the state, after the Supreme Court - bypassing a legal order - endorsed the thesis that such debt is of no relevance, federal, state, and local governments had a ball.
Don’t pay it, and that’s it. And let creditors go to the grave, if so they want, since, to the government, debts to citizens aren’t obligations to be met. But, just you try to be in default – by a penny – before the IRS.
More important, besides rewarding ruffians and bon vivants, is the need to have surpluses, which this year should be near R$ 7.15 billion (US$ 2.64 billion), almost twice the IMF’s demands.
Patriotic will be the petitioner without an heir. If that is your case, render the nation one final service: the sooner you pass away, the greater the surplus to the nation’s little coffer. The President, Governors, and Mayors, impawned, thank you.
Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal@baguete.com.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Eduardo Assumpção de Queiroz. He is a freelance translator, with a degree in Business and almost 20 years of experience working in the fields of economics, communications, social and political sciences, and sports. He lives in Boca Raton, FL. His email: eaqus@adelphia.net.
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