The Brazilian population wants a better judiciary system and for this they know that a strong and independent Public Ministry is essential. Despite have 33 political parties, social rights including political rights have not been guaranteed to everyone. And to make matters worse, the public budget for politicians to spend in ads before the elections, called big fund, has increased the inequalities between politicians and ordinary citizens wanting to become politicians. Brazil needs urgently more activists, more people debating how we can have a better country, more people watching authorities and demanding transparency with public money, economic growth, employment and better education, we need more people no afraid to speak what need to be done in your city, in your state to have a better place. Why a country with a huge economic potential as Brazil can not reach its potential? Why had Brazil one of the lowest GPD growth of the world in the last decade? Why, according to a forecast by CEPAL, will Brazil have the lowest GDP growth in Latin America this year? How can we diminish the distance between the Brazil legal and the brazil real? These are questions we need to do in this election? This post is a summary of the report with the title above published at https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/8770/IDSB_32_1_10.1111-j.1759-5436.2001.mp32001008.x.pdf?sequence=1
In Brazil, as in most democratic countries, the involvement of judicial institutions in political and social matters has grown significantly in recent years. In the light of such recent changes it is surprising that the number of sociological studies of the justice system in Brazil is still relatively insignificant. Despite the academic community's increasing interest, the judiciary remains the least studied of the three branches of government. The same can be said of the remaining institutions that comprise the justice system: Public Prosecutor's Office (PPO), public defenders, police, lawyers and civil registries. The importance of the justice system in Brazil is greater that that of a pillar of the democratic rechtsstaat. The Constitution of 1998 confers a critical role on the justice system, expanding its scope of intervention over the other branches of government. Furthermore, a wide range of social rights was constitutionalised in 1988. Taking into consideration the absence of a tradition of respect for social rights, the 1988 Constitution is a legal landmark. But has the new constitutional text provoked changes beyond formal law? Have justice institutions affected the life chances and opportunities of ordinary citizens? In Brazil, the desired effects of legal equality have been, if not null, at least of little significance. The distance between the two, legality and reality, has been observed by many analysts. The legal Brazil has been a country of equality, which incorporates rights and respect legal norms. The real Brazil is characterised by enormous inequality that produces dramatic effects in the opportunities for economic and social inclusion. The real Brazil, in contrast to the legal, has been a country of exclusion and of disrespect for legal principles. In the real country, rights are a dead letter for a part of the population. The dissatisfaction with the performance of the judiciary is not a recent problem. Public perception for a long time now has been that these institutions are incapable of responding to the rising demand for justice, are anachronistic or even worse, and are impervious to change. The current situation differs from that of the past, in at least two regards: first, justice has become a national priority, and second, tolerance for the inefficiency of the judicial system has decreased significantly. The lack of access to judicial institutions is a significant obstacle to the achievement of citizenship. Lack of knowledge of their rights, and a view of the law as something expensive and slow. has kept most of the population away from the courts, which are seen as a last resort. Social movements and their respective struggles for rights and social inclusion have gained significant visibility in Brazil since the 1980s. New collective actors have helped transform the concept of citizenship. Recent studies demonstrate that prosecutors see themselves as political actors whose role is not only legally to defend collective rights, but also to act in conjunction with social movements to 'resolve problems' that lie behind the defence of these rights. Some groups within the Public Prosecutor's Office even work towards developing political projects that seek non-judicial solutions in the defence of certain rights. While the Constitution undoubtedly delegates to the Public Prosecutor's Office the responsibility for supervising political and judicial institutions, it does not define who should supervise the institution. Such ambiguity raises the old question: 'who will guard the guardians? Two agents are responsible for ensuring internal control: the inspectorate and the Attorney-General, the highest post in the Public Prosecutor's Office. The Constitution grants a number of protections to members of the Public Prosecutor's Office to guarantee the institution's independence, mainly fron the executive. The current judicial reform proposal in the Brazilian Congress includes an important item that 'prohibits members of the office, the judiciary, and the police from unduly disseminating to the media, or other parties, information gathered in the process of carrying out their respective responsibilities, which violates confidentiality laws to the detriment of personal privacy and the public image of the individual in question. According to the reform proposal, the National Council of the PPO is empowered to fire members of the institution who violate the above caluse. Known as Lei da Mordaça (Muzzle Law). Those in favour of the reform justify it as a necessary means to protect individual rights. Opponents, however, claim that, if approved, the reform will effectively give impunity to public administrators involves in charges of corruption, public contracting fraud, misuse of public funds and illicit personal enrichment. The proposed Muzzle Law is not only the first reaction by opponents of the office, but it also is an indicator that the 'formal-legal country' has had an impact on the 'real country'. Simultaneously, however, there has been a rediscovery of the rule of law by society. A significant and growing segment of the population is discovering that the justice system can be an effective means to oblige government to carry out its responsibilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment