What does “lawfare” mean? Or the manipulation of Laws for political purposes. (part II)

What does “lawfare” mean? Or the manipulation of Laws for political purposes. (part II) It is about promoting popular justice. We all know or should know that we are the “presidents” of our own lives. And also, we should know that our powers end in our free will, that is, the power that each of us has to choose our actions, which path we want to follow. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (Martin Luther King Jr.) In this regard, another characteristic of these processes is the involvement of some sectors of the judiciary in these processes, in what is defined as the judicialization of politics. In Spain, following the participation of Unidas Podemos in the government solution with the PSOE, this coalition was the subject of 15 investigations that did not produce any evidence of illegality, but caused political and electoral weakening with the false identification of this political force with the corruption in the social imagination. (Exemplarily the so-called “cases and cases” that suddenly invaded the government of our country.) Meanwhile, several leaders of the Spanish PP were accused in corruption cases, with imprisonment, and the largest media outlet in that country approached these situations in a completely different way, as if they were mere social facts, that is, without any judgment being issued. and without a prolonged campaign against these people. For example, in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, who was leader of the British Labor party and who defended progressive measures that diverged from neoliberal policies, was the target during the five years of his leadership of systematic accusations of anti-Semitism by some extremist Jewish organizations and the Conservative Party. He ended up losing the elections in the United Kingdom and was forced to resign as a party leader. In Portugal, a former prime minister (Engº José Sócrates) was imprisoned for almost a year and has been waiting for more than 10 years for his case to reach a conclusion regarding the accusations made against him. More recently, we have seen an intense campaign by some media outlets in relation to several former members of the current Socialist Party government due to unacceptable behavior that naturally arouses public outrage, regardless of whether they contain any illegal content. Previously, at the level of local elections, we witnessed in Lisbon a prolonged campaign against Fernando Medina regarding the alleged supply of names of protesters to another country. We have no doubt that this campaign of wear and tear and discredit of the aforementioned candidate, along with the paralyzing dazzlement of the widely favorable poll numbers, were among the main factors in his electoral defeat. What is surprising in relation to former members of the government is that it seems to mean that the current leadership of the PS does not have rigorous and strict criteria for choosing the members of its pools of appointees for institutional positions, nor does it have detailed knowledge of its militants. As a governing party, it has not been able to defend itself against upstarts of all stripes who seek to find ways within its midst to access pure political-party and institutional careerism. It is important, however, to verify the enormous disproportion of this campaign with other previous situations, namely the Relvas/Passos Coelho/Tecnoforma case, in which, faced with serious facts, some of those allegedly involved were not arrested and continue to walk around, without much of the communication make any complaint about the prevailing impunity. Thus, we can conclude that systematically resorting to so-called lawfare has become one of the greatest dangers to democracy throughout the world. What constitutes its deepest objectives is to promote a political reconfiguration with methods of pure media terrorism, to discredit the State, political leaders, politics and above all Democracy. It is important to remember that the previous American government sent a neo-fascist agitator (S. Bannon) to visit several European capitals with the aim of organizing and applying financing methods to far-right organizations. On the other hand, the open interference of some sectors of the judiciary in political matters is leading to the practical disappearance of the division of powers that characterizes a rule of law. Democracies must have rigorous, impartial judicial systems that prove the facts highlighted and do not allow processes to drag on indefinitely. Democracies urgently need to develop active social policies that do not allow the extreme right to electorally “feed” on sectors of citizens desperate with the degradation of their social and economic situation.Here, there must be active citizen participation in reporting and firm opposition to these lawfare methods that, in practice, aim to create conditions to increase the weight of the extreme right and promote neoliberal policies that eliminate social rights. Darkness is flying around and the democrats must immediately put an end to it with practices of transparency and coherence that dignify the democratic regime. “We should all realize that injustice is committed in two ways: through violence and fraud. One concerns the fox, the other the lion. Both are unworthy of human beings, but fraud is the most despicable. Of all injustices, the most abominable is that of those humans who, when they deceive, try to appear as “good men”!” (Tullius Cicero – Orator – Roman lawyer and philosopher) Final note: these two writings were based on an article by doctor Dr Mário Jorge Neves