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Foro de Teresina

The episode argues that Brazil’s institutions are being tested at once by the Banco Master scandal, electoral judicial maneuvering, and a conservative offensive that makes legal abortion harder to obtain in practice.

A delação rejeitada, a pesquisa suspensa e a votação contra o aborto legal
piauí · By Ana Clara Costa, Celso Rocha de Barros, João Batista Jr. · 12 June 2026 · read the original in Portuguese →

Semanalmente, os apresentadores mencionam as principais leituras que fundamentaram suas análises. Confira:

Each week, the hosts mention the main readings that informed their analyses. See them here:

Conteúdos citados neste episódio:

Items cited in this episode:

“The Friend of Crime,” a report by Breno Pires for piauí.

“Better than Banco Master’s CDB,” a report by Arthur Guimarães and Allan de Abreu for piauí.

“The Negative Annexes in Vorcaro’s Plea Deal,” Bela Megale’s column for O Globo.

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT Sound bite: Rádio piauí.

Ana Clara Costa: Hello, and welcome to Foro de Teresina, Revista piauí’s politics podcast.

Sound bite: Why did the Central Bank cooperate so much with the creation, with Master’s growth, right up to its liquidation?

Ana Clara Costa: I, Ana Clara Costa, am temporarily taking over Fernando Barros e Silva’s microphone to talk with my friends Celso Rocha de Barros, here at Estúdio Rastro, in Rio de Janeiro. Hi, Celso!

Celso Rocha de Barros: Hi, Ana! Hi, João! Hi, everyone!

Sound bite: I would leave the polls free, and the people, in their sovereignty, decide which polling firms are serious and which are not.

Ana Clara Costa: And with João Batista Júnior, who remains in Lisbon. João Batista, who made quite an impact on our listeners last week with his reporting on Gilmarpalooza. Hi, João, welcome back!

João Batista Jr: Hi, Ana! Hi, Celso. Hi, listeners.

Sound bite: To find out that your 14-year-old daughter is there in the hospital alone, having an abortion, five months pregnant... We had to fix that in order to guarantee parental authority.

Ana Clara Costa: Let’s turn to the subjects of the week. Daniel Vorcaro remains determined to prove that he is still trying to command his own ruin, and for that reason we will open the program by talking about him and Banco Master. The former banker and now tenant of the Federal Police says he will compensate those harmed by his crimes to the tune of something in the neighborhood of 60 billion reais, but no one knows whether that sum exists or whether it is one more of the fables he has invented. Part of it would come from the bank’s assets, such as stakes in funds and court-ordered government debts, which are a long way from being liquid cash. The problem is that this wealth has already been frozen to compensate for the damage the bank did to the FGC and to state and municipal pension funds. In other words, Vorcaro wants to negotiate his plea deal using resources that no longer belong to him. Meanwhile, the investigations are moving forward without depending on him. The Bahamian courts have recognized Master’s liquidation, the BRB is looking for a way out of its multibillion-real losses. And, in the end, the question is simple: does Vorcaro still have anything concrete to offer, or only softened versions of the facts because of his intense friendship with the chiefs of the Centrão? The former banker’s second plea proposal is hanging by a thread, because he is following a playbook familiar among repeat plea bargainers. He talks more than he confesses and delivers less than he promises. In the second segment, the election is already under way, at least inside the TSE. For anyone who thought Justice Kássio Nunes Marques would arrive quietly and take some time before feeling comfortable enough to take sides within the court, reality asserted itself quickly. Nunes Marques performed a feat of normative acrobatics to take for himself a case that did not concern him. And what case was that? The publication of an electoral poll that would show Flávio Bolsonaro in decline. Nunes Marques decided that the questionnaire prepared by AtlasIntel, in partnership with Bloomberg, was tainted. Nunes Marques’s decision, which we will explain over the course of the segment, immediately shakes the tribunal’s relationship with the STF. The justice, however, did not block the Quaest poll, which also went into the field to measure the impact of the film Dark Horse on the Bolsonarist candidacy, as well as the effects of Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Brazil. The numbers leave no doubt: Flávio appears to be falling in both the first and second rounds. Flávio’s closeness to Vorcaro and Trump’s new barrage against Brazil weighed on voters’ perceptions, especially among those whose voting intention is more volatile. And we close this episode of Foro with another chapter in the conservative offensive against legal abortion. Last week, the Senate approved in a matter of minutes a bill overturning a resolution by Conanda, the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, on care for victims of sexual violence. Federal deputy Chris Tonietto and senator Damares Alves, with Davi Alcolumbre’s blessing, removed a protocol that helped guarantee access to what is a right of women and girls who are victims of rape. The lawmakers’ method was not to repeal the law that guarantees legal abortion, but to make its application difficult in practice. This has already been happening progressively in reference hospitals since the Bolsonaro government and continues under this government, especially thanks to the support of governors and mayors linked to Bolsonarism and the conservative agenda, as in São Paulo, where the state and the city government have deactivated the service offered to women and girls in the main hospitals. This outcome in the Senate shows that, despite the existence of legal protection, women and girls have suffered not only sexual violation but also the violation of their rights inside the National Congress. All of it sponsored by the Bible caucus, which brings together not only evangelical groups but also the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, the CNBB, a powerful lobby of the Catholic Church that has been used more and more to endorse the actions of ultra-conservative groups in the Legislature and in the STF. That’s it. Come with us.

Ana Clara Costa: Daniel Vorcaro’s second plea proposal is hanging by a thread. The Federal Police and the Office of the Prosecutor General believe the former banker talks a lot but still delivers very little. What is missing are new facts, evidence, confession, and the money trail. Meanwhile, the Master case keeps advancing on other fronts. Assets abroad are being assessed, the multibillion-real losses are still being counted, BRB is trying to get back on its feet, Rio Previdência is in agony, and the other state and municipal pension funds are still waiting for the promised compensation of the billions Daniel Vorcaro says he possesses. João, you are in Lisbon, but I know you are talking to everyone there, from Lisbon and from Brazil, about this subject. And I also know you have some sense of the path Vorcaro’s defense is tracing as it tries to gather those billions he wants to negotiate in the plea deal. I’d like you to begin by telling us how that stands.

João Batista Jr: Look, before talking about Vorcaro’s billions that are on the table in an attempt to get the deal ratified, we have to go back a few steps. I’m going to lay out a timeline of his recent period in prison. The ratification has a problem of principle. Lawyers throughout Brazil are unanimous in saying that he does not acknowledge having committed the crime.

Ana Clara Costa: Pause for Celso’s laughter.

João Batista Jr: There is an involuntary comic moment, that is undeniable. For Daniel Vorcaro, the situation he finds himself in is the result of persecution by the big banks and also of his political connections. He does not see himself as a criminal, full stop. For him, the person most responsible for his downfall is banker André Esteves, who, according to him, in recent months managed to convince the market and the press that he wanted to harm the protection system known as the FGC. At that point he completely ignores the damage he caused to those who invested more than 250,000 reais and the way he went about winning over funds from governments, states, municipalities, among other things. But let’s go on: within this problem of principle, ratification is like a marriage. The two parties, in this case Justice André Mendonça and Daniel Vorcaro, have to be in tune. They want to do something, but neither trusts the other. So, if he says he did nothing wrong, committed no crime, perhaps he feels wronged, and that is why the first ratification did not happen. He did not hand over the names of people who, according to the Federal Police, acted criminally with him.

Ana Clara Costa: He considered all that friendship, then, is that it?

João Batista Jr: Exactly.

Ana Clara Costa: Paying for Ciro Nogueira’s apartment, paying for everything for so many people... A friend like that, really...

Celso Rocha de Barros: Man, I still haven’t found one of those.

João Batista Jr: No. He is a bosom friend, as Breno Pires revealed in his piece, who spent 1.8 million reais on a single trip to Courchevel. So it really is an extraordinary friendship. And then, on the other side, we have Justice André Mendonça, who has a completely different view of Vorcaro: that yes, he committed crimes, unequivocally. And there is another issue that a lawyer mentioned to me: not only did he commit crimes, he used rather uncommon devices, shall we say, in carrying out those crimes, when it comes to morals. Justice Mendonça’s religious and conservative outlook may weigh on this ratification. In short, a plea deal is an agreement, and this agreement does not exist. Daniel sees no crime, and André Mendonça sees crime. So there is pressure on Daniel Vorcaro. He has to acknowledge the crimes, pay compensation, and race against time. Then, because of the Federal Police, which has been doing work beyond what would be necessary or contained within this ratification. The pressure also lands in André Mendonça’s lap. Society wants an answer, society is inclined to want that answer to be harsh and commensurate with the crimes committed. It cannot look as though the justice chose A and spared B. And that may apply, eventually, to his colleagues on the STF. That is, the justice’s credibility is also at stake. Whoever ratifies cannot be left vulnerable. So, back in May, which seems like a distant world but was last month, the first ratification was denied. Vorcaro changed lawyers. So what is at stake right now? He needs to acknowledge crime, he needs to cover the deficit he caused in the market, and here we are talking about the FGC, BRB, public pension funds, and other funds that were also harmed. These assets need to cover the potential debt estimated at 60 billion reais.

Ana Clara Costa: Fifty just from the FGC, right?

Celso Rocha de Barros: More than fifty.

João Batista Jr: No lawyer gives those numbers with precision. There is no inventory of everything Daniel Vorcaro can dispose of in order to provide compensation. There is the FGC estimate, and there are estimates for other matters. What are Vorcaro and his lawyers afraid of? They see this moment of his vulnerability, that is, a man who is in prison and trying to secure this ratification, and they fear that the funds and the stakes he has in companies may turn out to be worth little. So what do the lawyers try to convince people of at the moment of ratification? Look, these assets are very valuable, valuable enough to reach 60 billion. But there is still no inventory of real estate, works of art, stakes in funds... And how much would those funds be worth? More than that, where is all his wealth? You mentioned the Bahamas in the opening, but there must be other things outside Brazil. Bela Megale, in O Globo, reported that Vorcaro has a few annexes in this second attempt at ratification. That is, he acknowledges crime and identifies his partners in some of those crimes: Ibaneis Rocha, especially in relation to the sale of Master to BRB; Cláudio Castro, the transfers from Rio de Janeiro retiree funds; and Antônio Rueda. Rueda, who is president of União Brasil, although he holds no public office, was extremely close to Vorcaro and also to his partner Ciro Nogueira. Vorcaro and Master had a contract with Rueda’s law office. Apparently, it is a negligible office, but at the same time it had very hefty contracts with Master. So there is an expectation of understanding that perhaps those contracts had some other purpose. Speaking with another of Vorcaro’s lawyers, he returns to this matter of the 60 billion. He says this is the most controversial issue. I’ll quote him: “I think this figure of 60 billion is unrealistic. If it were half that, it would be more plausible.” And he also says: “If he had 60 billion, perhaps he would not be in jail today.” So this figure, people, is what is being negotiated in such a way that he can propose it in an attempt to get ratified. Two things are happening at the same time. He has acknowledged the crimes he committed and handed over the people with whom he committed those crimes, and he says he can dispose of an enormous sum, in this case that estimate of 60 billion, to compensate everyone who was harmed. It is a very complex sum. He does not acknowledge the crime. He is handing these people over because he has no other way out. A lawyer said something about Ciro Nogueira that I liked: Ciro Nogueira has an annex in this second attempt at ratification. Before, he spoke of Ciro as if he were a saint. Now he has spiced things up a little in this second stage.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Sensational.

João Batista Jr: Another lawyer who has been in contact with Daniel Vorcaro said the following: “There, in the first attempt at ratification, I acted within the rules, albeit in a daring and audacious way. I did not commit a crime.”

Celso Rocha de Barros: Would you look at that!

Ana Clara Costa: It is a very curious thing, because the market sets the price, not Daniel Vorcaro. It is not for him to say he has 60 billion, or that that court debt is worth it. He is not the one who gets to say. And especially when you are in prison, there is already a discount imposed on your assets by the very situation, right? So much so that even before he was arrested, when Master was collapsing, they tried to dispose of some assets to increase the bank’s liquidity, and those assets were supposedly already sold below market value. Because obviously, if you are in trouble, the market will price that into the value of your assets. So his talk of 60 billion is almost naive on his part. In a certain way, it even shows that he does not know how the market works, would you agree?

João Batista Jr: Ana, there is something interesting that one lawyer said, which is this: Daniel Vorcaro is controlling; he has a retinue of lawyers handling different things, criminal, corporate, and so on. But he is the one who captains his defense, he is the one who gives the coordinates. People say he is very intelligent, that he has good ideas for the path of his defense, but at the same time, as you were saying about this matter of the 60 billion and also the naivety of thinking anyone would believe this was not a crime, right? I asked a lawyer specifically: “Is he stupid? Because it is impossible to understand a man who created such a huge pyramid scheme believing these things.” And the lawyer said: “Would you believe I have asked myself that too?” Because there is this supposed genius in having created a pyramid that fooled a great many people. And there is another, shall we say, stupidity in thinking that now people would fall for the con. It is intriguing.

Ana Clara Costa: Celso, now, in Tremembé, there are a lot of people who think they committed no crime at all, right? Suzane von Richthofen, Roger Abdelmassih...

Celso Rocha de Barros: Exactly, those people. There are only innocents there. I don’t know whether young people still watch that series Seinfeld, which is one of my favorites in life, but there was the character George Costanza who said: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” So, if you have to lie, first you convince yourself.

Ana Clara Costa: Fake it until you make it.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Exactly. You convince yourself that that cock-and-bull story was true, and then you will lie with a much better chance of success, right? Vorcaro is a professional swindler, right? Anyway... But it really is fascinating that he seems to have convinced himself a little too well of his own yarn. What is clear so far? That Vorcaro is not delivering anything in the plea proposals; these plea proposals of his are scams, things to get himself a better cell... Or they are already an attempt to deliver a plea deal worth nothing that his political allies can push through, can persuade the authorities to accept, which would kill the Master case. If that is approved, Vorcaro gets out of jail, all those political allies of his are free, and that’s that, because everything he has delivered so far, at least what has leaked to the press so far as having been delivered by him, is the sort of thing that, if you listen to Foro de Teresina, should have been in the first episode in which we talked about the subject here. Only now is he saying that Ciro Nogueira, Antônio Rueda, Ibaneis Rocha, and Cláudio Castro received bribes. I mean, type into artificial intelligence: what was the Master case? That should be the first paragraph.

João Batista Jr: Ciro might be in item 0.01.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Exactly. So he only seems to have begun handing over the guys against whom the evidence is overwhelming and, indeed, against whom nobody needs his plea deal. What is delivering a hell of a lot is his cell phone, you understand? From the beginning here we said that it was a much better investigative path than his plea deal, as was already the case, for example, with Mauro Cid’s plea deal in the coup investigation. Mauro Cid’s cell phone was a precious trove of evidence, but Mauro Cid’s plea deal did not yield much, right? So everything indicates that the guy is delivering this nothing, this nothing of a plea deal, because he is waiting for someone to save him. He is waiting for a grand bargain, something of that sort. Now, in this story of giving the money back, there is a suspicion among the people following the case, which is this: that what he really wants to do is give back pretend money, which is basically the product he sold. Because some people think what he will want to do is take the court-ordered debts that were in Master’s hands and try to convince the courts that they are worth their face value, worth what Master said they were worth, and try to settle the debt with that. But that is make-believe money, Monopoly money. It is like being handed a little piece of paper that says: “This is money. Signed: Daniel Vorcaro.” Why? Court-ordered debts, precatórios, are money the courts have decided the government owes you. For instance, the government may have overcharged you in taxes. You went to court and won. Then the government says: “All right, fine, I’ll have to pay you.” Then you enter a queue. You are now the owner of a precatório, which is a right to collect from the government. Now, when that will be paid is terribly complicated; it is subject to high levels of uncertainty. There is a queue, there are all sorts of judicial problems that may arise along the way. So it is obvious that when someone buys a precatório from another person, he pays less than face value. If, for example, you have a precatório that says: one day the government will pay 100 reais. I am not going to pay you 100 reais now for that. One hundred reais now is certainly worth more than 100 reais God knows when. So if I buy your precatório now, I will pay you 35, I will pay you 40, depending on the probability that it will move forward.

Ana Clara Costa: Because you are assuming the future risk of that court debt, so that face value does not exist.

Celso Rocha de Barros: It does not exist. And for you, the seller, it may make sense. You may say: “Man, I need money. I would rather get 35 reais now than 100 reais a few years from now.” So it is a legitimate market. This type of negotiation is not a scam; it is people with different time horizons adjusting what each has to offer. Now, a business as risky as that is obviously not covered by the FGC, the Credit Guarantee Fund, which is there to protect your aunt’s savings, your retirement, the money you leave in the bank for a rainy day. So nobody keeps their retirement money speculating in court debts. What was Vorcaro’s racket? It was managing to transform these very risky investments into backing for issuing CDBs, bank certificates of deposit, which are covered by the FGC. That was one of the main scams Vorcaro pulled in this whole story. So he offered that CDB paying 140% of the CDI, those extremely high returns, and the backing for that business consisted of these debts he had to collect from the government, which he bought from people in the specialized market for the circulation of precatórios. And what you are basically doing is using FGC money to speculate in the precatório market. You are using other people’s money to make money in a highly speculative business and one that is often not very transparent. There is already an entire investigation into how Master bought these court debts. For example, there is suspicion that Master bought court debts from a Master company. Man, there is nothing that sets off every financial-fraud alarm in the authorities more than a guy doing business with himself. If the guy is buying and the guy is selling, it is a racket.

João Batista Jr: It doesn’t smell good, right?

Celso Rocha de Barros: Right, never in your life has it occurred to you to walk into your kitchen and say: “I’m going to sell this pan to myself.” It makes no sense at all, correct? So if there is an operation of that type, you already know it is a racket. How much of a racket is something being investigated. Now, besides that, afterward he used it as backing to make the CDB and then threw other people’s money into covering that business. At some point the market saw that this was going to go to hell, and there were even reports saying Master was calling “pre-precatório” a precatório. There is no such thing as a pre-precatório, people; that would mean buying a right the courts have not yet granted. So, I am suing the government, there is still no ruling in my favor, but I will already sell you whatever I may win in this business, if I win. That is ten times riskier still than a precatório. So there were allegations that, obviously, I have not had access to Master’s balance sheet, I cannot prove it, but it was reported in the press that there were pre-precatórios in that account. There were things on which the courts had not even yet issued a favorable decision. So basically the precatórios were worth nothing, people. They were worth very little, far less than Master said they were worth. And the suspicion is that Vorcaro now wants to pay those 60 billion with 60 billion in make-believe money that he invents with this business, you understand?

Ana Clara Costa: Yes, and it is not only court debts... Since they inflated everything, there were plots of land they placed in funds as collateral. piauí itself has a report by Arthur Guimarães and Allan de Abreu that talks about a plot of land they used as collateral, the Master people, and valued upward by 11,000% in 36 days. In other words, it is a lie, you see?

Celso Rocha de Barros: It is money worth nothing.

Ana Clara Costa: It is an office valuation.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Exactly. So the suspicion held by people following the case is that these 60 billion he wants to give are a lie, fake money. It is these things... “No, if you give me back that plot of land that appreciated by however many thousand percent in one day, I will hand it over at the value I lie that it is worth, and there, I’ve paid off my debt.” That would even legitimize the financial fraud Master has been committing all this time. So, if the guy now comes along and says: “I confess my crimes, I have 60 billion hidden in the Bahamas, and I am going to bring it here and give it back to the retirees,” that is one thing; the courts should accept that. Now, if he says, “No, no, I’m going to give it. All you have to do is give me back the money that is frozen, and I’ll take that, lie that it is worth money, and hand it over to you,” that would obviously be a second Master scandal. It would be him applying the same swindle twice, right, man? It would truly be a disgrace if anyone accepted that.

Ana Clara Costa: In the end, one keeps asking whether this is only a matter for the Penal Code or whether it is also a matter for psychiatry.

Celso Rocha de Barros: I thought that too. Does he believe anyone will fall for this?

Ana Clara Costa: It may be a case of that.

Celso Rocha de Barros: It may be.

Ana Clara Costa: Not that this nullifies the crime.

Celso Rocha de Barros: It does not make him not criminally liable, but...

Ana Clara Costa: But there is a new variable that begins to appear in light of these statements he has been making to the lawyers.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Exactly.

João Batista Jr: It is Vorcaro between the Federal Police and the CAPS, right?

Ana Clara Costa: So we end the first segment of the program here, and in the next segment we will talk about Kassio Nunes Marques’s decision to suspend the AtlasIntel poll and about the state of affairs in Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign. We’ll be right back.

Ana Clara Costa: Justice Kássio Nunes Marques ordered the suspension of the AtlasIntel poll, which showed Flávio Bolsonaro falling after the Vorcaro case. The decision opens a debate about censorship, polling, and the role of the Electoral Justice in 2026, which by all indications will be a little different from what it was in the 2022 election. Despite Kássio’s decision, Quaest did not have its poll suspended, and the numbers were released this Wednesday, showing that Flávio’s problem does not fit inside an injunction at the TSE. He fell in the first round and loses to Lula in the second round. And this Quaest poll already takes into account all the wear caused by his relationship with Daniel Vorcaro and the antics he has been getting up to in Washington. Celso, you analyzed these Quaest numbers closely and, in light of what we have been discussing here over the weeks when polls come out, how do you see Flávio’s fall?

Celso Rocha de Barros: Well, first I wanted to ask for a round of applause. I would even like listeners to clap at home for all those people who spent the 2022 campaign saying that Xandão was violating freedom of expression when he took down a Twitter account calling for a coup, all those things, and who now have to face Kássio Nunes Marques actually censoring indisputably legitimate content such as the AtlasIntel poll. So, if you were fool enough to fall for that Glenn Greenwald talk, all that kind of thing, a big kiss to you. Well, the expectation that this year the Electoral Justice would be more discreet than in 2022 is finished once and for all; it was always a miserable, shabby piece of nonsense. Because in 2022 the problem was not that the Electoral Justice was indiscreet. In 2022, the problem was that the Bolsonarists tried to stage a coup d’état. But this year, even without a coup d’état, at least so far, the Electoral Justice has already decided to be quite indiscreet. And Kássio Nunes Marques came out in defense of his candidate, trying to prevent the release of the poll in which Flávio was doing very badly. Kássio Nunes Marques’s argument is very poor because, as AtlasIntel rightly noted, people were exposed to Flávio’s audio during the poll after they had said which candidates they were going to vote for. So hearing the audio did not influence their voting decision. People heard the audio afterward in order to give an opinion on the audio, which is obviously legitimate. And, in fact, if you look at what we have had most in our electoral history, for example, there was polling right after the Mensalão. During Lava Jato, there were a lot of polls asking whether the revelations from Lava Jato would influence people’s votes. In short, all of that is part of opinion polling, which can sometimes be done better or worse, but what Kássio Nunes is arguing against AtlasIntel here is a lie. And the proof that things are as I am saying is that the new Quaest poll came out and the result is basically the same as the Atlas poll. With a different methodology, on different days, without the audio business, and Flávio falls all the same. The whole operation to block the Atlas poll is just a dirty trick by Flávio’s campaign so it can lie to its supporters inside the Bolsonarist information bubble and say that poll was false. It is a somewhat desperate effort by Flávio Bolsonaro to try not to be replaced as the right’s candidate. He did that in order to tell his people: “Look, I didn’t fall; it’s just that this poll was rigged.” He tried to buy time with that, but now the Quaest poll has arrived and the result is the same datum. What is Quaest’s result? Well, overall, if one were to sum anything up, it is that Lula did well and Flávio did badly. In some groups where Lula was taking a beating, things became much more balanced. For example, among people aged 35 to 59. Now, on the question “do you approve or disapprove of the government?” it is tied, which is much better than the government had been getting. Among young people aged 16 to 34, a sector where Lula had been taking a serious beating, he still has an approval deficit. More people disapprove than approve. But that deficit was 14; it fell to seven. It was cut in half. Lula’s approval among people who have only primary education, there in Lulaland, as I say, in that electoral territory where Lula usually gets elected, had a 12-point approval surplus and now has 20. So, in short, everywhere you look, the poll was good for Lula and bad for Flávio. In voting intention, Lula opened a ten-point lead over Flávio in the first round and six points in the second round. It is always good to say: six points in the second round absolutely does not mean this election is won. It is not a comfortable advantage.

Ana Clara Costa: And we are still very far away.

Celso Rocha de Barros: We are very far from the election. In fact, those people who were earlier saying that Flávio was already elected were being idiots too. You should not make a definitive diagnosis from a poll so far from the election. Actually, I don’t even know whether one should make a definitive diagnosis close to the election. Now, the fact is that the advantage Flávio had been gaining when the Master scandal broke, and the thing seemed to hit the STF above all, has died. Lula is winning outside the margin of error. It had been some time since either one had beaten the other outside the margin of error in this poll. But the bad news for Flávio is not only in the presidential polling result itself. The poll had quite a few questions about the Master case, and all the results are bad for Flávio. Here it is worth noting one thing: it is not that these people have stopped thinking the STF is entangled, no. They are only saying Flávio is more entangled. Now, one thing I found to be an interesting divergence from Atlas is that the number of people here who say they do not know about Flávio’s conversations with Vorcaro is considerably higher than in Atlas. And that is good news for Lula, in the end. Because there are still plenty of people to be introduced to the fact that Flávio Bolsonaro called the author of the biggest financial fraud in Brazilian history “brother” and that Flávio Bolsonaro asked the guy for 130 million. He got 60; he would have got 130 if the guy had not been arrested. In Quaest now, 65% of people say Flávio was wrong to ask Vorcaro for money; 60% say the conversation raises suspicions. That 60% is roughly the number against Flávio on every question about Master. For him, that is disastrous. We are going to have a tight election, and for 60% of people here to think he is wrong, it is because there are people here who had not been declaring a vote for Lula until now and who know that Flávio basically committed a crime. So clearly this sector is where the election will be decided. Twelve percent of people say the conversation with Vorcaro reduced their desire to vote for Flávio Bolsonaro, while 50% say it did not change because they already were not going to vote for him anyway. One thing we discussed a lot here, which might have helped Flávio recover and perhaps did help because the poll took place from one month to the next, not from one week to the next, is the classification of the PCC and Comando Vermelho as terrorist organizations. But here there is an interesting datum. When you ask, “the, blank space, should classify criminal organizations as terrorists?” the result varies quite a bit. If you fill that blank with the Brazilian government, “should the Brazilian government classify criminal organizations as terrorists?”, 60% say yes. So 60% of people think criminal organizations should be treated as terrorists. But when you fill the blank with the American government, only 45% say yes. That is a 15-point difference, quite a lot of people. So you can see that many people are obviously against organized crime, right? I hope nobody is in favor. They would even like it to be called terrorism and all that, for repression to be more violent, but they did not like this story of the American government coming here to resolve it. The nationalist card carried weight here. I am rather curious whether, if this poll had been conducted weekly, if it had taken place before Trump’s new tariff hike, if the only news had been “Trump classified them as terrorists,” whether people would also have been badly impressed by American intervention. Perhaps it would have shifted more toward Flávio, but that is not what happened. The following week came the tariff hike. It became clear that this was an intervention by the American government. And what I think is very bad for Flávio in the poll is the question: “With whom do you agree more? Option 1: Lula, who says the new tariffs are retaliation against Pix,” has 46%, and only 36% agree with “Flávio, who says the new tariffs are retaliation for Lula’s statements against the United States.” So here, not only did the United States explicitly mention Pix in its tariff hike, but you had Eduardo Bolsonaro’s unbelievable testimony saying that in the United States they have an electronic payment system, Zelle, and that Brazil could negotiate with the Americans on that basis. Eduardo tried to say, “No, I never said we should replace Pix with Zelle.” Man, but if it is not that, there is no negotiation on the table. What negotiation is that? The United States keeps doing what it does and we keep doing what we do? That is not a negotiation. For it to be a negotiation, what Eduardo needs to be offering the Americans is that Zelle will gain some advantage here in Brazil to compete with Pix. And you can look up every report: Zelle is a worse system than Pix in the time it takes for the transaction to work... So if you intend to pay the taxi with Zelle, it is not going to be good, understand? It takes time to work. You have to have an account at one of the banks that voluntarily participates in the system. And then you will say, “the service is free.” Free if you already pay that bank’s fees, right? Man, and all the economists who study this say Pix really is a revolutionary system by international standards and other countries should adopt it. And Eduardo’s statement... It is hard to imagine, if Lula had wanted to pay someone to say something in his favor that week, I think he would have had trouble finding anyone better than Eduardo Bolsonaro defending Zelle against Pix. So, if you take all the other results in the poll, the Patriotic Card is entirely in Lula’s lap at the moment, thanks to Trump’s intervention with help from the Bolsonaro family. And here there is a question that Fernando complained about in the last poll, which is the story that Flávio is more moderate than the Bolsonaro family, and Fernando recalled: well, he is from the Bolsonaro family. So it is a somewhat odd question. But what I found interesting is that this time “no” shot up. Before you had 47% “no” and 39% “yes.” In other words, the difference was eight points, and now the difference has become 17. The “yes” fell from 39 to 33 and the “no” went from 47 to 50. It is almost certain that these people are equating moderate with good. They are answering that Flávio is better than the Bolsonaro family, and now they are overwhelmingly saying no. So the poll is very bad for Flávio. And I think that, even if Kássio Nunes censors this one too, there is not much they can do in this area.

Ana Clara Costa: Celso, since you picked up the Kássio thread, I just wanted to talk a little about his decision. I think we need to pay attention to these moves, because what happened at the TSE was serious. This injunction was under the rapporteurship of Justice Estela Aranha; Justice Kássio, who currently presides over the TSE, simply created an immediate rule to take it away from Estela Aranha’s rapporteurship and put it on the agenda for a vote. In other words, he stripped a justice of her attribution. There was no legal provision for him to do that. And he did it. Then he sent it to the full bench, right? And when he decided this on Monday, the suspension of this poll, the temperature at the TSE was 6 to 1, meaning he would have the support of five other justices. Because the backlash was very bad, rightly so, right? The action he took completely ran roughshod over things, over the rules, over everything. Some justices pulled back, so the temperature kind of changed over the course of the week. Remember that when he voted on Monday, Estela Aranha asked for more time to study the case, so the others did not vote, but the feeling was that they were going to endorse it. Then, as things evolved over the week, that changed a little. Today, speaking a bit from behind the scenes at the TSE, it is still 4 to 3 in favor of this injunction. So I found what he did serious, taking the rapporteurship away from a justice and sort of trampling the whole legal process there right at the outset. The second point I think is important: this injunction was requested by the PL as soon as the Atlas poll came out, and it was a request from Flávio’s legal team, which is led by the former TSE justice Maria Claudia Bucchianeri. Not everyone heard this because I talked about it on Foro Ao Vivo at the Book Fair. But Flávio’s legal team, which was assembled for the campaign and is led by Maria Cláudia, is much more structured than the PT’s team today, right? And Maria Claudia is considered an extremely competent electoral-law attorney, in addition to having been a TSE justice. She has already defended Lula, she has already defended Arthur Lira, she has already defended Bolsonaro, and indeed, during the period when she was at the TSE, she issued several decisions favorable to Bolsonaro. So this was her first demonstration of what she intends to do during this electoral period, and it was a demonstration by Kássio of what he intends to do as well. So I think things are beginning to become very clear at the TSE, as to what that front of the battle will be like there. Something you, Celso, had already told us about here at other moments, right? And I also wanted to recall that several people on Flávio’s legal team are close to Justice Kássio, and there is also a lawyer who is not officially on Flávio’s legal team but is working behind the scenes, Gustavo Severo, a lawyer very close to Kássio. In fact, Kássio flew on several trips reported by the press aboard Gustavo Severo’s private jet. He went back and forth to various events on that jet, and this Gustavo Severo is helping Flávio’s team behind the scenes. So there is a pairing taking shape there that cannot be overlooked. What happened this week was not trivial. People, I have exceeded my brief here with my opinions, but I will leave you with João Batista, who I really must say, you know?

João Batista Jr: In fact, this means leaving the spreadsheets, the polls, and the censorship of Brasília for the shop-floor campaign. More or less shop floor. For a luxury hotel. This week, Flávio Bolsonaro was the star of a meeting promoted by Grupo Voto. The meeting was called “The Brazil of Women’s Ideas - Election Special.” It was an event promoted by the owner of Grupo Voto, a woman named Karim Miskulin. Karim had a corporate communications agency that, during the government of Flávio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, had a contract with Apex. This Grupo Voto has an intention of discussing politics with women, with the business world. To tell the truth, this meeting with 180 guests at the Tangará did not have a very starry quorum. These were not stars of GDP, they were not the thinking women of society. Who was there? For example, Rosana Valle, a federal deputy for the PL of São Paulo, Valéria Bolsonaro, a state deputy for the PL of São Paulo. In other words, two women who have an agenda. They want to be reelected, right? I asked the event organizers for the list of these 180 guests. They did not provide it. And, in general, the metric is the following: when you do not announce that you are going somewhere, it is because you may be somewhat ashamed. And when the place also does not announce that you went, it is because you do not add that much. So perhaps it was a meeting of people who are not quite so applauded, shall we say. I also asked to interview Karim, the organizer, and Karim did not want to give an interview. What her communications team said is that she, a thinking woman of society, also wants to gather among her celebrated guests other pre-candidates, such as Lula. But that is it: Flávio managed to censor something in Brasília and, day to day, face to face, he went to an event at a luxury hotel with people who are not so important.

Ana Clara Costa: The event is an emblem of his prestige at this moment, right? But I also think we cannot fool ourselves, because I think there are plenty of supposedly prestigious people who would vote for him but do not want to say publicly that they vote for him and do not want to appear in public at his side. But when the day comes, they will press the button.

Sound bite: Yes, they won’t go to his party... But yes, exactly.

Ana Clara Costa: But they will press the button, right? We know that. Well, we now end the second segment, and in the next segment we will talk about the Senate decision that suspended a Conanda resolution on legal abortion for children and adolescents who are victims of sexual violence. We’ll be right back.

Ana Clara Costa: The Senate approved in under two minutes and without a roll-call vote a bill that suspends Conanda’s resolution on care for children and adolescents who are victims of sexual violence. The measure does not change the Penal Code, but it makes access harder to an already existing right: legal abortion in cases of rape. The vote, reported by senator Damares Alves and celebrated by evangelical and Catholic groups, is another chapter in the offensive against legal abortion in Brazil. The right has been striking down protocols and creating insecurity in services, as well as pushing violated girls into an institutional labyrinth where care is lacking, support is lacking, and uncertainty abounds. Since 2024, when cases began to occur of reference hospitals that stopped performing legal abortion under pressure from the Federal Council of Medicine, we have been pressing this point here on Foro, and recently we also talked about this subject because of the CFM case, the Federal Council of Medicine, which no longer wants the medical profession to perform fetal asystole for the termination of pregnancies at 22 weeks. This debate is taking place inside the Supreme Court today, and a few weeks ago we returned to the subject because, coincidentally, the PGR issued an opinion favorable to the CFM, that is, endorsing the CFM’s view on this. What has been happening in Brazil in recent years? The reference hospitals that should carry out legal abortions for child victims of rape keep tossing a child from hospital to hospital. Time passes, the pregnancies go beyond 20 weeks. Then the CFM says it will no longer perform it because too much time has passed. So this is what is happening to girls in Brazil today. Girls, many of them in vulnerable situations, because when income is high, they solve the problem one way or another. And last week the Senate gave this gift, suspending this Conanda rule, which tried, in a certain way, to offer a bit of regulatory backing for these children suffering this kind of situation in reference hospitals. And then the Senate goes there and suspends it in a vote like that, in which we do not even know how each senator voted.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Yes, bad news just keeps happening, and we have to deal with it. This is a subject we cannot even joke about, as we do with party politics or things that are worth it. Because, basically, the discussion is: what cruelty are you going to inflict on a child who was raped? The Senate decided: any cruelty you want, including forcing her to have the rapist’s child. I suspect that if you asked rapists in prison whether they think it is right for their victims to be forced to have their children, I think at least some of them would have a moment of conscience and say no. That is not the case with senator Damares Alves. It is not the case with senator Davi Alcolumbre, who put this up for a vote. It is not the case with deputy Chris Tonietto, who sponsored this business. These people obviously want votes. They want to signal virtue with other people’s problems. Instead of signaling virtue by denouncing the corruption of their candidate for president, instead of signaling virtue by defending the people who were left without vaccines during the pandemic, they are signaling virtue by forcing children who were raped to have their rapists’ children, because they think this is a reaffirmation of moral conduct, when in fact it is exactly the opposite. Well, the Conanda resolution, which is the resolution the Senate struck down, was a resolution that tried to facilitate raped children’s access to legal abortion. So, just to be clear, Conanda did not propose, and could not propose, because it does not have the authority to do so, expanding the number of cases in which abortion is legal. It is saying to those people for whom the law guarantees the right to terminate a pregnancy: “We will establish procedures that facilitate access to this right that Brazilian legislation guarantees,” and it is worth remembering, has guaranteed since 1940. And among Conanda’s proposals is, for example, waiving or relaxing the requirement that the children’s guardians participate in the process of terminating the pregnancy, which is important because often it is these children’s fathers, these children’s stepfathers, these children’s legal guardians who committed the rape. Child rape is something that happens above all at home. So what the Senate approved now is that before the girl who was raped can terminate her pregnancy, she will have to ask the rapist’s permission. Damares Alves, Chris Tonietto, Davi Alcolumbre, all the people who approved this, approved the idea that a child raped by her father has to ask her father’s permission to terminate her pregnancy. That is what they did. In a vote, as Ana said, in which no one was identified. There was a debate I managed to catch here, which is this: even if you agree with everything Conanda did, does Conanda have the legal authority to do it? And I wanted first to point out the hypocrisy of the guys who say no, because what Damares, all these people, including those at the Federal Council of Medicine, are doing in all these cases of limiting access to legal abortion is, basically, trying to legislate through crooked paths. What they want to do is repeal the right to legal abortion by simply making it physically and practically impossible to perform, by preventing the possibility of exercising that right. That amounts to repealing the law for all practical purposes. So what Damares and her people are accusing the Conanda resolution of doing is what they themselves have been trying to do systematically for several years. Now, if there is some legal reason in this, if you actually think Conanda exceeded its authority, what you have to do is not simply revoke the resolution. You would have to immediately discuss what is positive in this Conanda resolution, turn it into law, and pass it through Congress. If Congress thinks the problem is that it did not pass through Congress, then Congress should work. I know that will be a new experience for you, but sometimes we have to open ourselves to other possibilities life offers us, you understand? If you think the problem here is that Conanda legislated without having the right to legislate, you have the right to legislate, and you are a bunch of layabouts who do nothing. There was no reason to make this farce, to completely revoke the resolution without putting anything in its place. What you are doing is only, once again, increasing the suffering of children, people society should protect, who were victims of a horrific crime. You are taking children who went through one of the worst experiences a person can go through, and you are making their lives worse. To do this and think you are being Christian, to think you are acting according to morality, only proves that you are a degenerate, man, that you are perverted, that you are depraved. But this is what happened in the Senate, and the people who did this will campaign this year as if they were excellent citizens, as if they were people who respected what the Bible says about abortion. Spoiler: the Bible says nothing about abortion. Anyone who wants to can check. And if it did, not everyone is obliged to follow the Bible, correct? That would be guidance for you, as a Christian, not to have an abortion, not for you to force other people not to have abortions. And this will win votes, people. This will work. The sad thing is this: this maneuver will work for the guys who did it. The people who did this to these children will manage to get votes from the additional suffering they will force these children to endure.

Ana Clara Costa: Not only votes, but votes in the Senate for the Supreme Court, which is the same as in the case of Jorge Messias, whom Lula will possibly nominate again. One of his main arguments for persuading conservative senators to vote for him is the AGU’s agreement, and his own personal agreement, with the CFM’s position on fetal asystole.

Celso Rocha de Barros: You are seeing the fierce war Brazil wages against its children who are victims of sexual violence.

Ana Clara Costa: João, you also spoke to quite a few people about this subject, and we wanted to hear from you.

João Batista Jr: All this discussion, which you here at Foro have covered so well, has in practice already had a very bad effect on these vulnerable children and women. That is, people who have legal authorization to terminate a pregnancy for the most varied and saddest possible reasons. So I spoke with a doctor on the front line of a hospital in Campinas, and he said that whenever these discussions enter the day’s agenda, that is, when they appear on Jornal Nacional, on news portals, on social media, women who have the right, that is, who fit what is understood as legal abortion in Brazil, become afraid to go seek help in hospitals and make the law count. They think they may be arrested. So the doctor said that for about four weeks while this issue was being discussed in the press, not a single woman appeared at the Campinas hospital to try to have a legal abortion, to claim her right. And there are two cases a week, every week. So four weeks without a single one appearing is quite symptomatic. In practice, these discussions between Brasília and the CNBB have already had an effect. And who are the people who seek care when it resumes? More white women, more women with some schooling. And then this same doctor said the following: in the state of São Paulo, and here São Paulo deserves a brief preamble, right? Both the state and the city; Ricardo Nunes is the mayor who handed over the medical records of women who had legal abortions to Cremesp. Then there was a discussion in the STF in which Justice Alexandre de Moraes said that this is illegal, violates privacy, violates civility, right?

Ana Clara Costa: Violating medical records is a crime.

João Batista Jr: Exactly. In the state of São Paulo, there are major hospitals that perform legal abortions: Campinas, Ribeirão Preto, and São Paulo. What happens? These hospitals have seen women arriving from very distant cities, even from other states, because they do not feel assisted within their own cities. Because if you go to a public defender’s office, if a girl has been violated and arrives at a public defender’s office, the office advises her to follow the legal protocol, to seek out the nearest hospital able to perform the procedure. Since this fear is consolidated among people and among the medical profession, they are going to these large centers: Ribeirão Preto, Campinas, and São Paulo.

Ana Clara Costa: And the large centers themselves, João, are not providing adequate care. São Paulo’s own reference hospitals are not providing care at the level they should. We know that.

João Batista Jr: In other words, there is a method, and that method is to make life hard for the doctor who is doing the work that belongs to him and that the law guarantees. And to make life hard for the woman or child whose lives are at risk. I also spoke with a person connected to the Catholic Church, who spoke of a person who has acted very forcefully within these discussions to ban or hinder legal abortion: Bishop Ricardo Hoepers. He has two posts: he is secretary general of the CNBB and auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Brasília. Comparing it with the political world, the secretary general of the CNBB functions like the chief of staff minister. He is a person who has connections with everyone. There in Brasília, he holds a mass for parliamentarians; that is, deputies who want to go to mass, he holds a special event for them, with coffee, where they all talk. This same person said that this bishop has always shown himself to be pro-life. Up to that point, it is no surprise that the Catholic Church positions itself against abortion. Not all of it, but it is a dogma of the Church. However, what he wants is to hinder or prevent legal methods, and he has been quite effective. This same person recalled the following: the Catholic Church should serve and welcome the most unassisted people in society. And the Catholic Church has often done that. In Cracolândia, in São Paulo, when children become pregnant as victims of rape and sexual violence of every kind, the pastoral ministry often welcomes them, taking them to the hospital, to the Public Defender’s Office, trying to give these children the minimum of dignity. Going back a few steps, the Emílio Ribas Hospital, which handles infectious diseases in São Paulo, has had a chaplain for decades named João Mildner. This man held wake after wake when HIV-positive people died and no relative went to the wake, or to the burial. So the Catholic Church, when it wants to, extends its hand. What we are seeing now is barbarity: the union between some conservative but very powerful religious figures and politicians who are thinking about votes and not about Brazilians’ public health.

Ana Clara Costa: Well, with João’s reporting, this blow to the stomach, we end this third segment and go to a quick break; when we return, we do the Kinder Egg. That’s it.

Ana Clara Costa: We are back, and let’s go to the Kinder Egg moment, a moment that has meant total defeat for me in this year of 2026.

Celso Rocha de Barros: Man, it’s been hard. The victory belongs entirely to Mari and to Maria Júlia, when she was filling in.

Ana Clara Costa: I hope luck is somewhere else, because it is not in the Kinder Egg. Let it roll!

Sound bite: I, in my life, I was, I had an employer, and on September 23, 1993, he died.

…the essay continues at the source.

Y done · S save · G great · B bad · N not for me