In an interview with my colleagues Cristina Graeml and Diogo Schelp, ex-minister, ex-judge and name-who-should-be-accented Sergio Moro, when explaining why he accepted to be part of the government of Jair Bolsonaro, invited the spectators (and, now, my readers) to an important reflection. “Put yourself in my situation,” he urged. And that’s what I did.
Not for the first time. Already in 2016 or 2017, when Sergio Moro was an undisputed national hero, the character interested me. I kept imagining myself in his place, signing Lula’s arrest warrant. What was going on in that little head? Did he tremble? soft? He asked me – still putting myself in his place – which principles guided my (in this case, his) actions. And what was the ambition of that astronomically fair judge and so so simple that he ate lunch.
Things began to change when Sergio Moro refused to greet Bolsonaro during the campaign of 2016 . Do you remember this minor moment, but analyzed to exhaustion? Still putting myself in his shoes, I began to realize that there was something there. Perhaps there was indeed a human being with virtues and defects behind the institutional character
. And, my God, how hard it must be to hide your flaws from the world when there’s a whole arsenal of spotlights and microphones eager for your image and words.
Then Sergio Moro left the judiciary to become Bolsonaro’s minister. I clearly remember putting my hands on my head and theatrically saying to a friend, there in the extinct Express Café, that I didn’t understand!, I didn’t understand!, I didn’t understand! what would drive a person to a crazy gesture like that. Is it vanity? Is it idealism? Is it stupidity? “It’s believing too much in the power of the State”, he told his friend, by way of conclusion. Sorry. It’s just that I lived the throes of libertarianism and didn’t know it.
And it’s in my misunderstanding (I made a conscious effort to put on other people’s shoes) that is the explanation for why Sergio Moro has not taken off as a viable name for the presidency of the Republic. After all, who knows what they think for real the man who had Lula arrested one day, quit the judiciary (and a hitherto successful history of fighting corruption) the next, put everything at risk by becoming a minister and put everything at risk once again by resigning blatantly? And, not satisfied, did he lose everything a third time, when he launched himself as a politician?
Master in MisdiagnosesNot that I lack the cognitive ability to reduce Sergio Moro to the usual labels: conservative or progressive, right or left, liberal or socialist – and so on. That’s easy. I lack cognitive capacity for something more basic: understanding the principles that guide the politically disastrous movements of the ex-judge. And, of course, maybe I’m just a Boeotian. But also maybe (always maybe!) Moro is just everything that others want him to be . Ouch.
Here’s an example. Watching the aforementioned interview, at one point he “wanted” Sergio Moro to be a master of misdiagnosis. And what was my surprise when, five seconds later, he just turned out to be a master of misdiagnosis! And, in this case, a master of misdiagnosing himself.
When talking about the rejection of his name, especially among the right, Moro attributed this to “lies and fake news”. But is he really the one attributing it? Because it’s not possible that the man who was once considered a super strategist and a 4D chess ace can’t take a thirty second stroll through social media and realize that the rejection of his name is due to at least three other factors.
First, to the fact that Moro left the government the way he left . Many people see him as a traitor. But rather than accepting that and facing this problem head-on, Moro prefers to up the ante, placing himself as an antagonist to the president who appointed him to the post. Afterwards, Moro is seen as someone whose ideology brings him closer to social democracy. Yes, the same as the PSDB and PT. If so, great, let’s deal with that reality. Now, if not, why doesn’t Moro make it clear and explicit what he thinks about moral (dear to conservatives) and economic issues (dear to liberals)? Finally, there is the issue of the emphatic defense of individual liberties during the most loko moment of the pandemic. Or rather, the lack
of this emphatic defense. And to think that all this, from Lula’s release to Moro’s transformation in a national Judas to be beaten by the right and the left, it could have been avoided if the ex-judge had opted for prudence, and not for the utopian desire to “end with corruption in Brazil”. And to think that all this could have been avoided if Moro had momentarily abandoned the manuals and codes and biographies for a copy of “Moby Dick”.
