This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BRASILIA 001076 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/05/2014 
TAGS: PGOV KJUS PINR SOCI BR
SUBJECT: BRAZIL TO GET A NEW SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE 
 
REF: A. 03 BRASILIA 2875 
 
     ¶B. 03 BRASILIA 3342 
 
Classified By: POLOFF RICHARD REITER, FOR 1.4B AND D. 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY.  Mauricio Correa, Chief Justice of Brazil's 
Supreme Federal Tribunal, will step down May 9 when he 
reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70.  This will be a 
great relief to the Lula administration because Correa has 
been a frequent and personal critic of President Lula and 
Chief of Staff Jose Dirceu as well as of many of the 
administration's policies and reforms.  Correa, a former 
Senator, never really stopped his politicking, and he is 
expected to run for office in 2006.  Correa's departure 
allows Lula to nominate his fourth Supreme Court justice. 
The post of Chief Justice rotates every two years, and the 
new Chief will be Nelson Jobim, a much less inflammatory 
figure.  The second-highest court, the Supreme Justice Court, 
also has a new Chief Justice who should likewise be less 
acerbic than his predecessor.  Correa's retirement opens the 
way for a long-awaited judicial reform bill to become law. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
MAURICIO CORREA DOES NOT GO GENTLE 
---------------------------------- 
¶2. (C) Mauricio Correa, Chief Justice of Brazil's highest 
court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), reaches the 
mandatory retirement age of 70 on May 9, and his departure 
will be a great relief to the Lula administration.  Since 
assuming the top post in June 2003, Correa has been an 
unrelenting and bitter critic of Lula, his top advisors, and 
GoB policies.  In September 2003, Correa unleashed 
surprisingly personal vitriol against the administration in a 
widely-read VEJA magazine interview (ref A), calling Lula 
dishonest and saying that the authority granted to Chief of 
Staff Jose Dirceu was "Stalinist".  Lately, Correa has turned 
his gunsights on the administration's bills to reform the 
pension system and the judiciary.  In the eyes of many, 
Correa symbolizes all that is wrong with the Brazilian 
judiciary:  tetchy, turf-conscious, and corporatist.  It was 
Correa who threatened to declare the administration's pension 
reform bill unconstitutional if it reduced judges' pensions, 
and Correa who blasted the October 2003 visit of a UN Human 
Rights Rapporteur (ref B) who criticized failures in the 
Brazilian judiciary. 
 
¶3. (C) Mauricio Correa was elected a federal Senator from 
Brasilia in 1986 as a member of the PDT party, and in 
1992-1994 he was Justice Minister to President Itamar Franco. 
 Franco nominated him to the high court in 1994.  It is 
widely assumed (and Correa has not denied) that he will run 
for Governor or Senator from the Federal District of Brasilia 
in the 2006 elections.  His eagerness to take partisan 
stances on so many political issues over the past year may 
well be his way of reestablishing his political profile in 
advance of his 2006 campaign.  This week was no exception. 
On his farewell tour, Correa spoke to a group of judges in 
Rio de Janeiro on May 3 and slammed the "slackness" of the 
Lula administration for endangering democratic institutions. 
 
 
NEW CHIEF JUSTICE NELSON JOBIM 
------------------------------ 
¶4. (C)  The new Chief Justice will be Nelson Jobim, currently 
the Vice-Chief.  Jobim, 58, is from the southern state of Rio 
Grande do Sul where early in his career he practiced and 
taught law.  In 1987, as a member of the PMDB party, he was 
elected Federal Deputy and served as sponsor ("relator") of 
key Congressional committees drafting the 1988 federal 
Constitution.  Last year, he raised eyebrows when he revealed 
that five articles of the Constitution were never properly 
approved (his book on the Constitutional Assembly is due out 
this year).  He served a second term in Congress (1991-1995) 
before President Cardoso named him Justice Minister 
(1995-1997) and then to the Supreme Federal Tribunal in 1997. 
 In 2001, he rotated into a two-year term as Chief of the 
Supreme Electoral Tribunal (an ad hoc body always presided 
over by an STF judge).  In that post, he did an excellent job 
administering the October 2002 national elections.  Jobim has 
clashed with Correa over the past year, sometimes criticizing 
and sometimes trying to walk back the latter's acid comments. 
 Jobim is a proponent of judicial reform and, not 
surprisingly, it was he who revealed last year that the STF 
issues an incredible average of 85 rulings per day. 
 
NEW HIGH COURT JUDGE 
-------------------- 
¶5. (C) President Lula has made no announcement yet, but it is 
expected that he will name a well-known University of Sao 
Paulo law professor, Eros Roberto Grau, 62, to fill the 
vacancy on the bench.  The STF has eleven members, and this 
will be Lula's fourth nomination.  Grau is a specialist in 
economic and public law and is personally close to both Judge 
Jobim and President Lula.  He is also known to be supportive 
of Lula's views on judicial reform and agrarian reform.  The 
judicial reform bill, now pending in the Senate, includes two 
highly controversial elements:  the first would create an 
"external control" body --an oversight commission for the 
judiciary-- while the second would institute some form of 
precedence (not now in use in Brazil), whereby lower courts 
must follow certain decisions made by higher courts. 
 
 
SECOND COURT ALSO HAS NEW CHIEF 
------------------------------- 
¶6. (C) The STF is the highest of Brazil's courts, but the 
second highest court, the 33-member Supreme Justice Tribunal 
(STJ) also has a new Chief Justice.  Edson Vidigal, 59, 
rotated into a two-year term as Chief of the STJ on April 5. 
Vidigal is also supportive of the judicial reform bill, 
saying that it should bring much needed "agility and 
transparency" to the judiciary.  Just as Judge Jobim will be 
less combative than Mauricio Correa, Vidigal is likely to be 
less acerbic than his predecessor at the STJ, Nilson Naves. 
(Naves remains on the STJ but rotated out of the Chief 
Justice slot.)  Vidigal was a town councilman in his home 
state of Maranhao in 1964 when he was jailed by the military 
regime.  With the 1979 political amnesty, he was elected 
Federal Deputy and in 1987 was appointed to the federal bench 
by then-President Jose Sarney (now Senate majority leader). 
Sarney is from Maranhao and is the political godfather of 
many of that state's public figures. 
 
COMMENT - STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION 
-------------------------------------- 
¶7. (C) Brazil's sclerotic judiciary is in dire need of 
reform, but the thin-skinned Judge Mauricio Correa fought 
tooth and nail against any type of change while accusing 
reform supporters of infringing on the independence of the 
judiciary.  The reform bill now in the Senate is not 
sweeping, but it could bring much-needed administrative 
improvement in the form of a precedent system to speed 
decisions and make them more uniform.  The proposed oversight 
commission is really a reflection of the judiciary's 
longstanding reluctance to police itself, remove corrupt 
judges, and become more responsive to the country's needs. 
Like the retirement of Judge Correa, the reform bill will not 
resolve every shortcoming of the Brazilian judiciary, but it 
is a step in the right direction.  Incoming Chief Justice 
Nelson Jobim will likely continue to support reforms and help 
to end a year of squabbling among the three branches. 
HRINAK