During the first lawfare attempt to annihilate the PT - the 2005 Mensalão scandal - the media gave Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Joaquim Barbosa the hero's treatment. This week he declined an offer to meet with Ex-Lava Jato Judge Sergio Moro. The Rumor is he'll support Lula.
It's sad to see anglo analysts like Perry Anderson still parrot the bourgeois media narrative about PT corruption that was built through this scandal. After years of slander against key figures in the party, like former communist guerilla Jose Genoino, they were all exonerated.
Genoino, who could've been a successor to Lula, was falsely accused of personal enrichment in the mensalão scandal by corrupt, right wing extremist multimillionaire Roberto Jefferson. At the time of his arrest, he lived in Butantan, a lower middle-class neighborhood in São Paulo.
Obviously, having a former communist combatant from the Araguaia guerilla war against the US-backed neofascist military dictatorship in a position of power pissed off a lot of elites, which is why he was framed.
In an ironic twist of fate, as Genoino and most other PT leaders originally implicated in the scandal have been fully exonerated, staunch Bolsonaro ally/Mensalão whistle-blower Roberto Jefferson is back in jail for making violent threats against the Supreme Court.
As someone who lived in Brazil during the entire Lula presidency and the Mensalão scandal, I think Joaquim Barbosa now understands and regrets that he was used by the Brazilian media oligarchs. This is why he supported Haddad in 2018, and will probably support Lula this year.
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