Vote for people who have gone through legal proceedings, are charged or accused of a crime punishable by imprisonment? Societies that have implemented laws that require candidates for elective office to be clean of criminal records are frequently faced with dilemmas such as the one that, for example, would affect Brazil in the general elections next October. According to the latest polls on voting intention, Brazilians would lean 45 to 48% for Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva as president, leaving the current president Jair Bolsonaro with just 32 to 34%, according to the latest polls. .
Lula’s supporters don’t care that their leader was tried in 2017 on charges of passive corruption and money laundering, receiving a sentence of nine and a half years in prison, raised to 12 years on appeal. With this, the requirement of the clean file law was configured, which prevents citizens with a final judgment in the second instance from running for elective positions. But in March of last year, a Federal Supreme Court judge annulled the sentences and cleared Lula of all charges.
The trial of Lula and the removal of Dilma Rousseff from the Brazilian presidency via political trial were cases that popularized the term lawfare, generally understood as a legal war or instrumentation of the courts to erase from the scene politicians with a good chance of being elected to office. of relevance, generally the Presidency of the Republic. Few presidents have been saved from falling under some kind of judicial process. The one with the most open cases is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has accumulated a total of 11 trials, all for corruption. Former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera barely survived the political trial that Congress instituted for him for alleged influence in the sale of a family property. Rafael Correa, former president of Ecuador, was tried and sentenced, in absentia, to eight years in prison on corruption charges. His successor, Lenin Moreno, is already facing accusations for alleged links to offshore companies with which he has business.
With such a panorama, talking about a clean record in politics becomes almost a joke. And Paraguay is not the exception but the rule in itself, since with each election the galleries of criminals and defendants are renewed.
