Brasília, August 18, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The Judiciary is experiencing its greatest credibility crisis, according to the president of the Federal Elections Board (TSE), Minister Sepúlveda Pertence. This week he expressed his fears that his generation will be unable to regain the respect of society, even though he manifested confidence that new lawyers and judges will be able to create a better judicial system. Pertence recalled that the inefficiency and consequent "shocking decline" of faith in the judicial system contribute to a general social bias in favor of accusations cast against magistrates, without any regard whether the basis is "the frustrated interests of many individuals or the levity of many others."

According to the Minister, the situation that the judicial system is currently undergoing is part of the larger crisis affecting all institutions of representative democracy. For Sepúlveda, the crisis has attained an unprecedented scale, which, in his analysis, is becoming more "dramatically serious" each day. In an address to recent law school graduates, in Brasília, he observed that each day the press documents the progressive corrosion of the prestige of the Brazilian Judiciary, a fact he considers the result of the multiplication of what he termed a "perverse vicious cycle." "To be a respected judge in Brazil nowadays is a bitter sensation," he confessed; "nevertheless, society should not question the honorability of the immense majority of Brazilian magistrates."

The president of the TSE told the graduates that true democracy is not built without "strong judicial institutions that are able to fulfill their role of enforcing obedience to the legal order on one and all, from the ordinary citizen to the powerful channels of mass media." (DAS)