Brazilians are used to the fact that the Parliamentary Investigation Commissions (CPI) always end up in nothing. An exception was expected, however, from the Senate ICC on covid-19, also known as the pandemic, and from the more than 600,000 victims that devastated the country.

In fact, there is no memory of an ICC that has been followed by public opinion with the fervor and passion of a football championship. The Senate was paralyzed for six months. He made the country shake after having discovered the open sores of a scandal of corruption, neglect and denial of the tragedy on the part of the president, Jair Bolsonaro and his government, who for a moment were cornered.

The ICC worked for six months with the Senate practically paralyzed. An accusatory document of more than 1,000 pages was produced. Among the accused are the President of the Republic and 79 other people, including ministers, former ministers, politicians and businessmen. Bolsonaro was charged with common crimes, crimes of responsibility and crimes against humanity.

The document revealed how many lives from the pandemic could have been avoided without the political crimes committed. The cry of “genocidal” against Bolsonaro resounded in the Senate. It was a moment of hope for society to avenge its dead and to emerge from the nightmare of a government discredited worldwide.

The accusatory document was solemnly presented by the ICC commission to Augusto Aras, Attorney General of the Republic, a month ago and only now, after being summoned by the senators to clarify the delay, has he announced that next Saturday he will comment on the measures. you intend to adopt. It is true that Aras is recognized as a personal friend of the president whom he tries to protect, but this time it is something too serious that touches the whole of society closely and the hopes of doing justice to the victims of the pandemic are at stake.

If all the efforts of the Senate ICC that were praised by public opinion and that were seen as a redress for the excesses perpetrated by the president, it would be a great national and even international frustration since the repercussion that the investigation had here was followed also abroad.

That the ICC could end up in borage waters is intuited from the ease with which Bolsonaro, who was even taken to international tribunals, is mocking the accusations that fall on him as well as the silence of the National Congress that could have opened a process of impeachment against the president.

Brazil has been seriously injured by the pandemic in large part due to the negligence of its rulers and this is doubly serious because it may increase, if possible, society’s mistrust of its politicians and judges who end up protecting each other without ever ending up prosecuted.

Public opinion was this the only time in which, given the shock that the final Senate document produced with its serious accusations against Bolsonaro and his government, it came to hope that it could serve to remove from power what is considered the worst president. of democracy. Democracy that he has tried by all means to undermine by threatening several times with a coup.

The severity of a possible frustration of the results of the ICC of the pandemic could have serious repercussions in the next presidential elections in which it was hoped to be able to free the country from one of the greatest authoritarian nightmares in its history, with serious consequences on the economy. and in the coexistence of the country due to the sowing of hatred by a president.

Responsibility for a failure of the ICC’s work on the pandemic would mean Bolsonaro’s political survival. The triumph again of the extreme right-wing coup would lead to the disaster of the economy that has already been seriously hit and the continuation in power of the reactionary forces that have made this country, which was already the sixth world economic power and a consolidated democracy approved by 70% of the population, an imitation of the so-called banana republics.

The responsibility of the Senate will end not only staining the memory of the dead of the pandemic but also mocking the pain of the families to whom no one will return their loved ones.

Those most interested in ensuring that the work of the Senate ICC does not end up frustrated and without concrete condemnatory consequences, without waiting years, should be the various candidates to contest the next presidential elections. If it is difficult for a president not to win re-election since he has the entire state machine at his disposal, in this case, a triumph by Bolsonaro in the serious accusations of the ICC of the pandemic would mean a sad defeat for democracy.

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