Representative Beto Preto has until Monday (17th) to reach a settlement in impropriety case
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Tempo previsto
16/4/2025
Governor condemns Brasília violence, while deputy defends protestors' motives; details inside.
At 6:44 pm this Sunday (8th), it's worth celebrating that the headlines don't carry any death tolls from the events in Brasília. The seats of the Three Powers were occupied and damaged by people whose descriptors are numerous and imprecise. From a basic political standpoint, anarchists. From a psychoanalytic perspective, primitives, or ignorant masses. In any case, no condition grants those people the noble titles of patriots or nationalists.
These ignorant masses are particularly wounded by their defeat at the ballot box, in a clear manifestation of fragility. That is, the cognitive restriction operated by forces such as Protestant religious fundamentalism and the misery of political representation culminates in this sadness: "in the past, I wasn't heard, I had a president I loved, but he lost the election despite my unrestricted support, this support cost me friendships and family relationships, I no longer have the energy to justify Bolsonaro's flight to the United States, and I don't know what to do with my time".
Given the facts about the omissions of the Federal District Security forces, the attacks against police officers and journalists at work – with video records – the calculated damage to public property is a minimal issue to deal with. I argue that breaking windows is a lesser loss than human lives.
Above all, however, the damage is moral, and prior to the concept of legislation. It is damage to the core of what identifies us as rational beings, an attack on the primacy of reason. It is serious, and its effects extend beyond Brazilian borders.
The Secretary of State for Industry, Commerce, and Services of Paraná, Ricardo Barros, defended the acts. In a live interview on CNN, he argued as follows:
"The Superior Electoral Court, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, tried to impose the credibility of the electronic voting machine. He issued a TSE resolution prohibiting criticism of the electronic voting machine. He silenced parliamentarians. He silenced several journalists who wanted to criticize. He did not convince society that the voting machine was reliable. If he had convinced society that the voting machine was reliable, and not imposed trust in the voting machines on society, we wouldn't have these people, who are Brazilians, who are there with their faces uncovered".
Challenged by the journalist interviewing him, he was embarrassed on air. I consider her attitude professionally immature, since she should have had the perspective of someone interviewing a career congressman who was the leader of the Bolsonaro government.
The governor of Paraná, Ratinho Junior, published on Twitter that he repudiates the acts.
Regarding Paraná, it is unknown whether Governor Ratinho Junior's stance of apparent neutrality, recently praised by Archbishop Dom José Antonio Peruzzo in a video, will continue to be neutral or whether he will authorize Barros' discourse.
Leia insights sobre a interação de humanos com modelos de linguagem de IA, e sobre os ODS no Brasil. Lab Educação 2050 Ltda, que mantém este site, é signatária do Pacto Global das Nações Unidas.
Networks amplify discourse, threatening rational debate.
Violence weakens democracy; firm institutions & justice are vital.
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Federal Congressman for Paraná, Beto Preto (PSD), has until Monday (17th) to accept or reject a deal with the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP). The summons was ordered by the 1st Court of Public Finance of Apucarana (PR), relating to a case of administrative impropriety.
As a condition for closing the case, the MP proposes that Preto compensate for damages and pay a fine of R$ 25,000. In the lawsuit, the prosecution points to losses to public funds caused by a fraudulent bidding process in 2013, amounting to R$ 127,194.43.
Beto Preto headed the Health Department in Paraná during the pandemic. It was then that he made a name for himself in the election that took him to Brasília. He is currently on Governor Ratinho Júnior's shortlist for succession to the Iguaçu Palace. If convicted of an act of impropriety, he could have his political rights suspended.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Beto Preto, then president of the Intermunicipal Consortium of the Ivaí Valley (Cisvir), contributed to a bid-rigging scheme by assisting a criminal organization led by the deceased businessman Marcelo Cernescu.
The then-president approved a bidding procedure without considering several irregularities. The scheme involved, according to the MP, shell companies and the contracting of services considered unnecessary because they should have been provided directly by the public administration.
In the initial petition, the prosecution describes illegalities in the bidding process for the contracting of an object described as "unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal".
Furthermore, the elements gathered in the investigation indicate that, to achieve the illicit objectives, regardless of the contracting municipality, a similar modus operandi was employed, consisting of a joint effort between public officials and businessmen of the group to "assemble" bidding processes for the contracting of an unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal object, whose acts bear clear indications of concealment.
—Initial petition of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
For the MP, the items in the bidding process do not justify hiring a private company, and it is a mere artifice "unequivocally created for the diversion of money from public coffers".
Congressman Beto Preto even had his assets frozen, along with the other defendants. Due to a change in the Administrative Improbity Law approved in 2021, the judge in the case ordered the unfreezing of the assets.
Micro-doc reveals Jenin camp reality, a symbol of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank.
Ten Palestinians were killed and one hundred injured by Israeli military forces in one of the largest operations against Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in years.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, where Jenin is located, since 1967. This represents 56 years of illegal occupation, violating international law.
Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world. They have lived in refugee status for 75 years, both abroad and within Palestine itself, without the right to return to their regions of origin or even to move freely within their own country.
Palestinians have the right to resist the illegal occupation, the expulsion from their homes, and the chronic violence to which they are subjected.
We, writer and journalist Cassiana Pizaia, and analyst and journalist Vinícius Sgarbe, produced a micro-documentary about Jenin over a year ago, following two trips to the Middle East.
