I worked for a (large, powerful) company where our Brazilian compliance people were 100% outside of Brazil to reduce the risk of them being thrown in jail because a judge wasn't getting answers fast enough.
Not sure if those judges are elected but it doesn't really matter.
As a matter of fact. I think it would be highly unusual for any corporate official, let alone a low-level case handler, to be at risk here.
Brazil is a conservative leaning country with neoliberal aspirations that looks up to the US (florida specially) like the paradise on earth. Judges are friendly to business and it takes a lot to piss them off if you're part of the circle (rich). These examples from twitter are a niche where the company is caught between the politics of the supreme court and what it sees as threats (some times correctly, sometimes too much and dangerously overbearing).
Supreme court judges are not elected, they are appointed by the president. As a tradition during the years where the current party was in power before Bolsonaro the court itself made a list of candidates that they voted for and the president was asked to pick from the top three (as a request, not binding), Lula and Dilma always picked the top candidate to avoid any showing of interference. President Temer picked the second choice and Bolsonaro picked someone outside the list (twice) and that tradition will likely die down because of it, Lula already picked from outside the list too now.
Another fact people seem to ignore/disregard, the Brazilian STF cannot just issue orders without a request from the prosecution or lower courts. An example where Judges exert the god like power is on lower courts where the prosecution aligns politically with a judge and work together like they did on the Lula trial and ended up overthrown by the supreme court for it. If they do it for someone less popular, they get away with it.
The judicial branch, not the presidency, is the issue in brazil.
I didn't say anything about illegality.
Dictatorships can be perfectly legal. Especially if a court says so.
And, given the fact that this is about the judicial branch taking dictatorial actions, almost by definition anything that they decide or choose to do would be legal (As the judicial branch is the one that decides in the first place if its legal or not!)
And so, where is the evidence? Even 3 high impact examples would suffice as a starting point.
[EDIT]; typo fix
Have you read any history?
Two exemple which are frequently used as exemple are Italy and Germany in the 1930´s but neither Hitler nor Mussolini came in power through the election, but by strong arming the power in place, and after that (at least for Germany) use the excuse of rigged election to validate their power.
They both abused that power afterwards to become dictators.
And calling Alende a dictator need some Shutzpah. On this point, I think we would have to stop at the « agree to disagree » level.
Second, I would say that the jury is still in debat for Bukele. Yes, it’s re-election is anti-constituai but he seems to still have the support of the population, as the election seemed to be fair and healthy.
But I agree that his legal shenningans to allow for his re-election don’t bode well for the future. Let’s wait and see.
It seems that the story you have is different from the one I have. Could you tell yours?
You're a couple votes from becoming a dictatorship in any democracy, by definition: 1) amend constitution or equivalent to allow the vote, 2) vote in the dictator, 3) there is no step 3.
In France, for exemple, you need first to have majority in both chambers (Senate and parliament) to validate the content of the modification. Then you need to have of 3/5 of parliament OR the majority in a referendum for apr roving the modification and putting it in the constitution.
And for almost every healthy constitutional democracy, it the same order of difficulty.
That's not how it works
I would welcome any elements which would invalidate my (quite incomplete, I recon) perception of the situation.
For history it isn't. Read up on the fall of Wiemar Germany.
Also, when he is named chancellor, it’s been a while since the democratic value of weimar were hurting. Paul Von Hindenburg started as soon as 1930 to govern through executive act, ignoring and/or strong arming the Reichstag. Not really what I would call a healthy democratic government.
Also, Hitler was named as chancellor through a plot of the current weimar government to avoid calling new elections, like the laws said they must.
Just to add my two cents, even though it's not a link to documents with proof, but Brazil is a tightly controlled country with very little that is democratic. Yeah there are elections but politics do NOT operate here the same way they do in North America. You've got a lot of corrupt government and even if you elect someone else, they can do very little to make it more democratic.
For the record, I'm Canadian, and I've been living in Brazil for almost two years. When you actually experience it, you feel you are under a system that acts a lot like a dictatorship...or at least something VERY far away from democracy.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is not directly elected. Nor is the Supreme Court of the United States. Nor the Supreme Court of Canada. Nor the High Court of Australia. Nor the Supreme Court of New Zealand.
The US is unusual in having an elected judiciary at the state and local levels (only in some states, however) – but not at the national/federal level. However, this is not the "Anglo-Saxon model" since none of the other major Anglosphere countries do that.
Seems dictators get voted into power more often than not...
The people elected Adolf Hitler, who promptly changed the law to prevent himself being unelected.
Hitler was named chancellor of the weimar republic by the government. Not elected as such.
And it was part of a plot from the weimar government to be able to continue to work without casting new elections, as asked by the laws.
But I agree that, if it he had run, he would have win, as the NSDAP was the leading party in Reichstag at the time.
says
> Finally, there were 855 deputies; Adolf Hitler was No. 433, elected to the Reichstag constituency 24 Upper Bavaria – Swabia.