Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently considered innocent and can run for president in 2022 if he wishes. Lula was arrested in April 2018 under Operation Car Wash, conducted by judge Sérgio Moro in the Brazilian southern city of Curitiba, in the state of Paraná. In November 2019, the Supreme Federal Court ruled that incarcerations with pending appeals were unlawful and Lula was released from prison as a result. Yesterday, March 8, 2021, the Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin ruled that all Lula’s convictions must be nullified because Lula was tried by a court that did not have proper jurisdiction over his case. This is so complicated that I had to check in Wikipedia to make sure I’m getting the basic facts straight.

Now I wonder: what changed between April 2018 and November 2019? And what changed yesterday? Don’t know! Was Lula illegally arrested in April 2018? What kind of country is this, in which people are arrested unlawfully?! Why it took Edson Fachin almost three years to realize that Sérgio Moro had no jurisdiction in this case?! Is Brazilian law really so complicated that it takes even to a supreme court judge three years to realize that something is wrong? What is going to happen to Lula now? After all, he was in jail unlawfully for more than a year! But mind this: Edson Fachin didn’t say that Lula is innocent! He said that Sérgio Moro had no jurisdiction to judge him. Theoretically, Lula can be judged by a new court, with the same proofs, and be condemned… again. You know, Seinfeld was right:

“What are lawyers, really? To me a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We’re all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there’s a problem, the lawyer is the only person that has read the inside of the top of the box. I think one of the fun things for them is to say, ‘objection.’ ‘Objection! Objection, Your Honor.’ Objection, of course, is the adult version of, ‘’fraid not.’ To which the judge can say two things, he can say, ‘overruled’ which is the adult version of ‘’fraid so,’ or he could say, ‘sustained,’ which is the adult version of ‘Duh.’”

I’m afraid that in the case of Brazil, if the supreme court judges don’t quite understand the rules of the game, neither can I.