This week, as Flávio Dino concluded his term as a Senator of the Republic, he decided to stir up a significant controversy: the privileges afforded to members of the Judiciary and Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Unlike the rest of the Brazilian population, retirement for members of the Judiciary and the Public Prosecutor’s Office is not merely a pension benefit but a privilege that harks back to Brazil’s colonial and monarchical past. It reflects the patrimonialism typical of those who confuse their personal property with public assets. For judges and members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the most severe punishment for administrative infractions is removal from active duty, meaning the individual is taken out of active service but continues to receive compensation in the form of “retirement.” This benefit thus takes on the nature of a sanction, distorting its original purpose as a pension benefit. After all, the function of retirement is to ensure a dignified life for the contributor when they can no longer work, not to serve as a punitive measure.
It is important to remember that Brazil is a low-income country, and Brazilians earning more than 28,000 reais a month are part of the top 1% of earners. Currently, the constitutional salary cap for public servants is 44,000 reais. This means that the average retirement pension for judges and prosecutors falls within this range.
This type of “penalty” is just one of the many immoralities that privilege members of the Judiciary. Other perks, such as 60 or more days of vacation, allowances disguised as indemnity payments that exceed the constitutional salary cap, among others, have created a caste that, from a democratic moral perspective, cannot be justified in any way. Why, for instance, should a judge have 60 days of vacation plus a judicial recess? There is no explanation for this that doesn’t involve the still muddled public administration in Brazil, filled with patrimonialism.
It wasn’t too long ago, in 2013, when former judges of the Rio Grande do Norte Court of Justice (TJRN), Osvaldo Soares Cruz and Rafael Godeiro Sobrinho, were compulsorily retired due to irregularities during their professional duties. Five years later, in 2018, when the alleged irregularities were undeniably proven—such as embezzlement and misappropriation of funds—the disciplinary penalty could not be revoked, not even after a guilty verdict.
As argued by Judge Ivanaldo Bezerra Ferreira dos Santos, the inability to revoke compulsory retirement imposed as a penalty on members of the Judiciary stems from the lack of legal provisions and the impossibility of expanding punitive measures against the defendants. This interpretation necessarily extends to any other crime within the Brazilian legal system. In other words, even judges involved in cases of pedophilia, rape, and other heinous crimes are compulsorily removed—as a form of punishment—and continue to receive their pensions.
The necessary harmonious coexistence between the branches of government is evident. However, acting legislatively within democratic parameters to reduce the privileges of the Judiciary and the Public Prosecutor’s Office is constitutionally guaranteed by the system of checks and balances.
Nothing in the Constitution legitimizes compulsory retirement as a penalty, 60 days of vacation, or allowances disguised as indemnity payments. All these distortions arise at the infraconstitutional level, and it is commendable that Flávio Dino is ending his legislative career by proposing the reduction of privileges in the branch of government he is about to join: the Judiciary.
It’s never too late to cut privileges. Even some communists know that.