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southeastasianists · 6 years

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Female activists are battling the system and rampant misogyny in the fight to have their voices heard. Southeast Asia Globe explores the challenges facing some of Malaysia’s most prominent female civil society leaders

Maria Chin Abdullah turns to an empty page in her notebook and begins to sketch an outline of her cell. She knows it was in Kuala Lumpur, but, blindfolded every time she was taken out of it, has no sense of its exact location.

The 62-year-old draws the four walls, the concrete bench where she slept, the two strip lights along the ceiling, the door with its one-way hatch and, in the corner, the shower with the air-conditioning – sometimes hot, sometimes cold – blowing directly above it.

This cell – she thinks it was probably in a basement – is where Chin was held in solitary confinement after being detained by Malaysian police on the eve of last November’s Bersih 5 protests, which called for electoral reform and an end to corruption.

In all, the Bersih leader was held for 11 days, nearly all of it under SOSMA, a law introduced to deal with terrorists. Accused of “activities detrimental to parliamentary democracy”, Chin was eventually released without charge.

“It is really unjust,” she says. “You detain me under SOSMA, put me in solitary confinement, interrogate me on a daily basis over many, many hours, and yet you can’t even come up with charges. This is all part of the intimidation.”

The mother of three is perhaps contemporary Malaysia’s best-known civil rights activist, capable of convincing tens of thousands of Malaysians to take to the streets to demand free and fair elections and an end to corruption.

But Chin is not the only woman making a mark in the country’s small, but vocal, civil society. The government might be keen to talk about its initiatives to propel more women into decision-making roles in business and the public sector, but women are already at the forefront of issues from refugee and migrant rights to religion, heritage conservation and the environment.

In their work, they battle a patriarchal society where men still dominate politics – the country has been under the same central government since independence in 1957 and has never had a prime minister who wasn’t male or Malay, the majority ethnic group – as well as preconceived notions about what women should and shouldn’t do.

“I don’t really look my age, so sometimes they feel they don’t have to take me seriously,” says Yasmin Rasyid, 42, a US-trained biologist who founded the non-profit EcoKnights 12 years ago. The group spends about 80% of its time on environmental advocacy. “I’m kind of cursed in a few ways. Female is one, being not a typical image of a Muslim woman is another… In this field, I feel that I always have to prove myself.”

Cynthia Gabriel, a Malaysian of Sri Lankan ancestry who made her name in the human rights group Suaram and helped found the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) three years ago, has also felt the pressure to conform to stereotypes in her work as an activist and a councillor. Gabriel spent eight years on the Petaling Jaya council after being appointed in 2008 (there are no local elections in Malaysia).

“It’s not just being a woman,” the 44-year-old says. “In this country I’m also a minority and I’m also small [Gabriel is about 1.57m tall]. When I was on the council and had to do a lot of public engagement work, I could tell immediately when the public sees me coming they would think: ‘Oh my God, she’s a woman and she’s so tiny!’ The first impression is: how can we take her seriously? It’s daunting, but it has never stopped me from speaking my mind.”

Out of 222 seats in Malaysia’s federal parliament, women hold just 23; in the cabinet, only three of the 35 ministers are female. Few women hold seats at the state level either.

“It’s nothing to do with the individual’s ability to take up leadership roles,” says Maznah Mohamad, associate professor in the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore, who is attempting to convince parties at the state level to adopt a policy of women-only additional seats to kickstart gender representation. “It’s the other things: the networks, the money, the patronage, your links with the party. There is no shortage of capable women to run for political office, but the conditions are still not there.”

Sexism and discrimination is so common in public life that the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality, a collective of seven women’s NGOs, holds an annual awards event to highlight the worst offenders and raise awareness about the extent of the problem.

In April, one MP claimed that nine-year-old girls were “physically and spiritually” ready for marriage and that there was nothing wrong with a rapist marrying his victim. The law under debate when he made his comments – to outlaw child marriage – failed to pass.

A few months later, during discussions on domestic abuse laws, one MP claimed men suffered “abuse” when their wives criticised them, refused to have sex or didn’t let them take a second wife. Male MPs have also ridiculed women for having periods, to chortles from some of the other men in the House.

It is the kind of environment in which threats and intimidation against women thrive, and those who are most visible – the campaigners and the few politicians – are easy targets.

In the weeks leading up to Bersih 5, Chin received a death threat showing her and her sons beheaded in an Isis-style execution. C4’s Gabriel has endured numerous threats to her safety in her campaign to uncover the truth about Malaysia’s $1.2 billion purchase of two submarines from France in 2002, a deal tarnished by allegations of kickbacks and the murder of a mistress of one of the key players.

“You cannot back off in pursuit of the truth,” the 42-year-old tells Southeast Asia Globe during an interview at her office.

In July, a French judge investigating the alleged kickbacks indicted Abdul Razak Baginda, who negotiated the deal and was an advisor to Najib Razak, then the minister of defence and now Malaysia’s prime minister. Two top French executives have also been indicted. “That’s what makes you strong and resilient. You must do as much as you can, while you can,” Gabriel adds.

Earlier this month, as the sun began to set over the centre of Kuala Lumpur, about 1,000 women took to the streets in protest at what they called the country’s “toxic” politics.

“Long live women! Long live Malaysia!” they shouted as they congregated outside a shopping mall, hemmed in by elevated walkways and a small number of police separating the crowd from the traffic. Carrying bunches of purple balloons and holding hand-drawn banners aloft they walked to a cacophony of drums, stopping behind a pick-up truck transformed into a makeshift stage.

Chin was among the organisers of the event, which was in some ways a ‘who’s who’ of the most well-known women in Malaysia’s public life. C4’s Gabriel was in the crowd. Marina Mahathir, renowned for her work on HIV/Aids, stood on a truck at the front of the procession with her mother. Alongside them was Faridah Ariffin, a former ambassador and outspoken member of G25, the influential group of former civil servants calling for a more moderate Malaysia. Chin’s predecessor at Bersih, lawyer Ambiga Sreenevasan, was there too. As was Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the current head of the opposition.

“We have so little power everywhere else, and this [rally] was a space to assert some kind of voice. To see a lot of women coming together like that, it renews a sense of hope”

On the street, as successive women clambered aboard the truck to rally the crowd, Maryam Lee and her friends beat their drums. The 25-year-old founding member of Projek Dialog, a group set up to encourage Malaysians to talk about issues such as religion and sexuality, which are usually batted away as ‘too sensitive’ to discuss, is one of a growing number of younger women seeking to make their mark in civil society.

“It just felt powerful,” she says of the rally. “We have so little power everywhere else, and this was a space to assert some kind of voice. To see a lot of women coming together like that, it renews a sense of hope.”

Lee, who’s been the target of vicious social media attacks, particularly around her decision to stop wearing a headscarf, says it was her time as a student that awakened her to the injustices around her and fuelled her activism. She was an undergraduate at Universiti Teknologi Mara, Malaysia’s biggest university, which is open only to bumiputera – the official term used to describe the country’s ethnic Malay majority and other indigenous people.

“My first question was: why are there no Chinese and Indians?” she recalls during an interview at her home in an eastern suburb of Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia has significant populations of people of Chinese and Indian descent, and increasing numbers of mixed marriages.

These days Lee calls herself an “intellectual activist”, which she defines as someone who aims to shape public opinion, and is pursuing a master’s degree in development studies at the University of Malaya.

Universities, whether at home or overseas, have proved a fertile training ground for the Malaysian women now shaping civil society. Analytical chemistry may seem an unlikely degree for someone who now fights corruption, but it was the subject that introduced Gabriel to campaigning after she helped an NGO investigating suspected nuclear contamination at a village in northern Malaysia. Later, she studied for a master’s in law.

For Chin, her studies in England coincided with the Vietnam War and a political awakening across campuses in Europe and the US. Back home, too, it was a time of tension. Race riots had stunned Malaysia in 1969, leading to affirmative action in favour of the bumiputera – a policy that remains in force today – while industrialisation was creating new challenges for workers, and women.

When Chin returned to Malaysia she took up the fight for women’s causes using the skills she’d learned as a student to cajole and persuade. Gradually, her interests expanded.

While Chin has endured intimidation and harassment, she has no intention of caving in.

In detention, she was questioned every day, but stood her ground. “The same questions over and over and over, but asked differently,” she recalls. “I was asked to give names. It was like pushing me to confess to something I didn’t do.”

Bersih 5 continued without Chin and the 14 other activists who had been arrested the night before. Despite the intimidation, at least 40,000 people still filled the streets and the group’s leaders immediately announced they would hold a vigil every night until Chin was released. The Kuala Lumpur authorities soon closed off Merdeka Square in the centre of the city where they planned to hold their vigil, but people came anyway, while hundreds of women marched to parliament to show their support for the jailed civil society leader.

On 28 November, Chin was freed. She is convinced it was those public campaigns that helped secure her release.

“They don’t realise that the strength of the people who support us has always been constant, and that gives us the courage to speak out,” she says. “The fear is always there: the fear of arrest. But you know that you won’t be alone, even if you’re in solitary confinement.”

#Southeast Asia #Malaysia #Activism #People #Gender Issues

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jkottke · 6 years

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"How Picasso Bled the Women in His Life for Art"

From Cody Delistraty in the Paris Review, a timely article on Pablo Picasso, his artwork, and how he treated the women in his life (spoiler alert: quite poorly).

Sixteen years ago, Marina Picasso, one of Pablo Picasso's granddaughters, became the first family member to go public about how much her family had suffered under the artist's narcissism. "No one in my family ever managed to escape from the stranglehold of this genius," she wrote in her memoir, Picasso: My Grandfather. "He needed blood to sign each of his paintings: my father's blood, my brother's, my mother's, my grandmother's, and mine. He needed the blood of those who loved him."

After Jacqueline Roque, Picasso's second wife, barred much of the family from the artist's funeral, the family fell fully to pieces: Pablito, Picasso's grandson, drank a bottle of bleach and died; Paulo, Picasso's son, died of deadly alcoholism born of depression. Marie-Therese Walter, Picasso's young lover between his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, and his next mistress, Dora Maar, later hanged herself; even Roque eventually fatally shot herself."Women are machines for suffering," Picasso told Francoise Gilot, his mistress after Maar. After they embarked on their affair when he was sixty-one and she was twenty-one, he warned Gilot of his feelings once more: "For me there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats."

At the same time, his granddaughter has curated a show in Paris of Picasso's art celebrating his relationship with his daughter Maya.

Diana Widmaier-Picasso, who is the daughter of Maya Widmaier-Picasso and Pierre Widmaier, a shipping magnate, and the granddaughter of Picasso and Marie-Therese, curated the exhibition. She is well aware of the usual misanthropic, misogynistic characterizations of Picasso. "He's a man of metamorphoses," she tells me carefully in Paris, a few days before the vernissage of her exhibition. "A complex person to grasp."

When I was in Paris recently, I went to the Picasso Museum, where one of the exhibitions showcased his art from 1932, the artist's "année érotique". The Guardian described the show thusly:

Achim Borchardt-Hume, the gallery's director of exhibitions and co-curator of the 2018 show, said the challenge facing curators was: "How can you get close to Picasso as an artist and a person? How can you get beyond the myth?"

Their answer was to focus on one period in Picasso's long life. They chose 1932, a time called Picasso's "year of wonders".

It was a year when he cemented his superstar status as the world's most influential living artist, producing some of his greatest works of art and staging his first retrospective, which he curated. It was also a year when his passion for Walter almost boiled over.

Picasso was 45 when, in 1927, he spotted the 17-year-old Walter as she exited a Paris Metro station. He approached her, grabbed her arm and declared: "I'm Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together."

At this point, the quality of the art is undeniable but so too is Picasso's treatment of women: he beat them, verbally and emotionally abused them, cheated endlessly on his wives, and entered into at least one sexual relationship with a girl under the age of consent (though with the permission of her parents it seems). He chewed women up for his art and then left them to die, literally. A small aspect of all of the allegations that have come out recently (Weinstein, Spacey, Louis CK, Roy Moore, Matthew Weiner, Charlie Sheen, Jeffrey Tambor, Dustin Hoffman, Leon Wieseltier, and -- never forget! -- fucking Trump) is the collective realization (mostly on the part of men...women have been aware) that not only has massive chunks of our culture been created by specific men who abuse women but also that so-called "Western culture" in its entirety has been marked and in many ways defined by systemic and institutionalized misogyny that has chewed up women for art and discarded them en masse. Never mind your fave is problematic...the whole damn culture is problematic. This aspect of the creation of culture has been largely written out of history, but going forward, it's going to be important to write it back in.

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mymoviesnob · 5 years

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A Movie Snob Predicts the Oscars – 2019 Edition

Hello fellow movie lovers! It’s been another busy award season. There were 121 nominations and I got to see all but 9 of the films this year. Not too shabby, all things considered.

This season, like the ones before it, was full of pleasant surprises, a few hours I can’t get back and films shining a bright light on topics which were painful to watch.

Now, for the four of you who still read this each year, let’s get to the movies! J

Best Picture:

· Black Panther – The first Marvel movie to be nominated for Best Picture. I don’t see this as the winner.

· BlacKkKlansman – Based on a true story, about a black cop, impersonating a white cop, to infiltrate the KKK.

· Bohemian Rhapsody – I loved this movie. I love Queen. I wish Freddie Mercury had been able to grace us with his presence for more than we were lucky enough to receive. I would love to see this beat Roma but unfortunately, the Director’s alleged shenanigans will get in the way.

· The Favourite – Dark and witty, full of strong performances. This however, was not my favorite. (Yes, pun intended…I know, I’m hilarious)

· Green Book – Another based on a true story, about a black performer in need of a driver/ body guard as he tours the deep South and how their friendship was formed. I really enjoyed this film. Mahershala and Viggo were both fantastic. I kept wondering how I had never heard of these men before watching this.

· Roma – While I can’t call this my personal favorite film in the bunch, I do think it will take the top prize this year. It’s been so lovingly received by critics while others on this list have been subject to controversy moving Roma to the top of the pile.I did enjoy it, just not as much as others here.

· A Star Is Born – I loved this too and when I saw it, I thought it would be a lock for Best Picture… until I saw the competition. I was equally surprised by Lady Gaga’s acting and by Cooper’s singing. I’ve seen the previous versions of this film and while I typically dislike remakes, this was well done. Cooper should have received a Director nod here.

· Vice – Based on the life and career of the notoriously private Dick Cheney. Something tells me he will never endorse this one, or confirm any of its story line. If you like Cheney, you will hate this movie. And if you hate him, it will make you question just how awfully distasteful you can find another human being to be.

Lead Actor:

· Christian Bale – Vice –When I first read that Bale was going to play Dick Cheney in a movie, I thought Central Casting was delusional. Then I saw it. If anyone is going to give Malek competition, it’s Bale. You literally forget it’s him buried behind the makeup.

· Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born – Cooper will get his Oscar one day and I thought he was fantastic in this movie, but this is not his time.

· Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate – He’s always great, this time as Vincent van Gogh

· Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody – Malek became Freddie Mercury. Every detail of his iconic performances, recreated to the letter. He must have studied Mercury’s every move. The commitment to getting that right is stunning and I think this win will be well deserved.

· Viggo Mortensen – Green Book – Another great performance by an actor who seems to be able to play anyone.

Lead Actress:

· Yalitza Aparicio – Roma

· Glenn Close – The Wife – I didn’t want to like this one. I don’t care for her, ever since she boiled a bunny back in the day, but she was amazing.

· Olivia Colman – The Favourite – I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll be seeing much more of her.

· Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born – She was surprisingly great in this movie, but it wasn’t really much of a stretch… playing a singer and all. Don’t get me wrong. She’s an incredible talent and deserving of this nomination, but I’m curious to see how her film career progresses playing roles outside of the scope of her ‘day job”.

· Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me? – Another true story and another surprise. McCarthy in a serious role as the caustic (not to mention desperate) author, Lee Israel, as she resorts to forging letters for profit. If you haven’t seen this one, watch it. And someone please sign her up for more roles outside of the comedic space!

Supporting Actor:

· Mahershala Ali – Green Book – Everything I’ve seen him in has been excellent. This was no exception.

· Adam Driver – BlacKkKlansman – I love, love, love Driver.

· Sam Elliott – A Star Is Born – About time you nominated him, Academy!

· Richard E. Grant – Can You Ever Forgive Me? – I’m not sure I’ve seen him before but watching him here made me want to find everything else he’s ever done. I don’t think he will beat Ali, but if he did, I wouldn’t be disappointed.

· Sam Rockwell – Vice – Another consistently consistent character actor, this time as a weirdly convincing G.W. Bush. I love it when the Indy guys get the attention they deserve!

Supporting Actress:

· Amy Adams – Vice – We get it… the Academy adores Amy Adams. She did not blow me away in this movie.

· Marina de Tavira – Roma

· Regina King – If Beale Street Could Talk – I must confess that this was one of the films I was not able to see. It left the theater too soon, and as you may know, I won’t use bootlegs on this journey each year. I’ve chosen her for a few reasons… one, she’s won virtually every other award known to man for this performance. And two, this has been a long time coming. She’s always great!

· Emma Stone – The Favourite – Stone and Weisz here a glorious team.

· Rachel Weisz – The Favourite - She’s married to Daniel Craig so she’s basically already won at life.

Director:

· Spike Lee – BlacKkKlansman - Spike Lee is finally nominated here! I do believe he will take home a statue one day but I don’t think it will be this year.

· Pawel Pawlikowski – Cold War

· Yorgos Lanthimos – The Favourite

· Alfonso Cuaron – Roma

· Adam McKay – Vice

Animated Feature:

· Incredibles 2 - this gets my kid’s vote, just for the record.

· Isle of Dogs – Another year where I have the opportunity to declare my love for Wes Anderson. Another year where he will go home empty handed.

· Mirai

· Ralph Breaks the Internet

· Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – I can’t believe I’m choosing a non-Disney / Pixar for the win, but I am. It’s visually stunning.

Animated Short:

· Animal Behaviour

· Bao – Pixar for the (predictable) win. Every one of the films in this category is a gem! Watch them all!!

· Late Afternoon

· One Small Step

· Weekends

Adapted Screenplay:

· The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and would recommend it.

· BlacKkKlansman – This category is tough. I think this may be where Lee picks up a win, but…

· Can You Ever Forgive Me? – … I really loved how this was written… and I think it can bump Lee out of the top spot.

· If Beale Street Could Talk

· A Star Is Born

Original Screenplay:

· The Favourite – The quick witted dialogue may push this one over the top to win.

· First Reformed – I want my two hours back

· Green Book – The Favourite is the favorite in this category, but I think the story line in our current climate will give this screenplay well warranted votes

· Roma

· Vice – Another film where the writing definitely shined!

Cinematography:

· Cold War

· The Favourite

· Never Look Away

· Roma - There is just something about the way this movie was shot which immediately grabbed me at the opening scene. The very things I loved about it are things that others found to be a turn off, but the crisp black and white, tight, artsy shots were mesmerizing. Maybe it’s my love of photography, particularly B&W, but this film made it easy to see the beauty in the mundane.

· A Star Is Born

Best Documentary Feature:

· Free Solo – Will probably win, but…

· Hale County This Morning, This Evening – A film about regular people doing regular things. I hope the point is not lost on those who see it.

· Minding the Gap - This is an interesting narrative on the leap into adulthood and just how hard that is to navigate.

· Of Fathers and Sons – Watching this literally made me feel physically ill. If you question whether or not hatred can be taught, this confirms it.

· RBG - … I’m rooting for RBG, tonight and every single day for every single reason! Someone please put this woman in a bubble and preserve her for all of eternity... or at least until the next administration.

Best Documentary Short:

· Black Sheep - The Shorts this year were difficult to watch. This is about a young black man and his experiences growing up in a suburban white British town.

· End Game –This film is about the painful process of helping a loved one through the last days of their life and the humanity of the doctors and nurses who are walking alongside them. This is my vote.

· Lifeboat –About refugees fleeing their war torn home in the hope of a better life.

· A Night at the Garden – Actual footage of a 1939 Nazi rally at “The World’s Most Famous Arena”. The fact that this actually happened in this country, and so long ago, hurts my heart.

· Period. End of Sentence – About young women in India just trying to survive being a girl in a culture that demonizes something which is utterly (and biologically) out of their control.

Best Live Action Short Film:

· Detainment – A reenactment of the interrogation of two ten year old boys in Ireland, accused of murdering a toddler. Terrifying. And true.

· Fauve - this won at Sundance, but…

· Marguerite – my pick to win

· Mother – As a parent of a 6 year old boy, this one kept me up at night.

· Skin

Best Foreign Language Film:

· Capernaum

· Cold War

· Never Look Away

· Roma – If this doesn’t win I’ll be shocked, but since it’s a likely winner in other categories, voters may spread the love and throw Cold War a bone.

· Shoplifters – I really liked this one, about an unlikely group of outcasts in Japan, trying to survive on stolen items while flying under the radar.

Film Editing:

· BlacKkKlansman

· Bohemian Rhapsody

· Green Book

· The Favourite

· Vice

Sound Editing:

· Black Panther

· Bohemian Rhapsody

· First Man

· A Quiet Place – I’m selecting this because of how profoundly important sound was to the entire concept of the film. I know I’m probably wrong... it will probably be Black Panther

· Roma

Sound Mixing:

· Black Panther

· Bohemian Rhapsody – Because of the music

· First Man

· Roma

· A Star Is Born

Production Design:

· Black Panther

· First Man

· The Favourite – Period piece + Castle = Win

· Mary Poppins Returns

· Roma

Original Score:

· BlacKkKlansman

· Black Panther

· If Beale Street Could Talk

· Isle of Dogs

· Mary Poppins Returns

Original Song:

· All The Stars

· I’ll Fight

· The Place Where Lost Things Go

· Shallow – if there is one certainty about tonight, this is it.

· When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings

Makeup and Hair:

· Border

· Mary Queen of Scots

· Vice – Because I forgot Christian Bale was in there….

Costume Design:

· The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

· Black Panther �� This is hard because any one of these could take it, but this is my gut feeling

· The Favourite

· Mary Poppins Returns

· Mary Queen of Scots

Visual Effects:

· Avengers: Infinity War

· Christopher Robin

· First Man

· Ready Player One

· Solo: A Star Wars Story

I’m sad to see this season come to an end as the summer blockbusters approach. Here’s hoping there are some hidden gems among the moneymakers this summer to keep me company!

Thanks for sticking with me to the end, all four of you. :)

#moviesnob

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newstfionline · 7 years

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In Brazil, Political Rivals Face a Common Threat: A Rising Judiciary

By Ernesto Londoño and Shannon Sims, NY Times, July 13, 2017

RIO DE JANEIRO--It was anything but a surrender.

At times jovial and defiant, the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stood before a crowd of cheering supporters, painting himself as the victim of a deceitful judiciary that had wandered dangerously into politics.

“If they think that with this sentence they will take me out of the game, let them know that I’m in the game,” Mr. da Silva said on Thursday, a day after his conviction on corruption and money laundering charges threatened his bid for a third presidency.

Corruption investigations have discredited virtually every powerful political force in Brazil, upending the country before presidential elections next year.

Now political adversaries on very different sides of the ideological spectrum are relying on the same survival strategy: attacking the legitimacy of prosecutors and judges who have set out to dismantle the culture of corruption that Brazilian politicians have institutionalized over decades.

The ruling against Mr. da Silva, one of Latin America’s most lionized and influential politicians, is the biggest conviction in a battle between the political class and a corps of judges and prosecutors--many of them in their 20s, 30s and 40s--who have dashed the impunity that elected officials have enjoyed for years.

On one side of the fight are veteran politicians like Mr. da Silva and the current president, Michel Temer, who faces the possibility of being ousted from office and sent to prison on corruption charges.

The two men, both in their 70s, are bitter political rivals who spent decades rising and falling in the highly fractured Brazilian party system, where fickle alliances are often sealed in back-room dealings and secret payoffs.

Standing against them are prosecutors and judges who argue that they are championing a more responsive vision of government. Preaching transparency, they are active on social media, openly encouraging Brazilians to make a united stand against graft.

“The faith in the political class is weakening, and this brings about a sense of confidence in the judiciary,” said Alan Mansur, the head of Brazil’s National Association of Prosecutors.

Dozens of lawmakers have been indicted or investigated in the past few years, for a range of crimes that include accepting unlawful campaign funds, soliciting bribes and laundering money.

And public opinion polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Brazilians support the investigations rattling the political class. An Ipsos poll released in January found that 96 percent of respondents supported allowing the sweeping investigations that have caught up many political figures to continue “to the end, regardless of the outcome.”

Sergio Moro, 44, the judge who convicted Mr. da Silva, has become the most prominent figure in the crusade against corruption. Saying that he took no pleasure in sentencing a former president to almost 10 years in prison, Judge Moro invoked a saying by the 17th-century English historian Thomas Fuller to underscore the ruling: “Be you never so high the law is above you,” he wrote.

As the corruption cases overseen by Judge Moro have ensnarled an ever-growing class of powerful Brazilians, the judge has become something of a folk hero in the country. And in legal circles abroad, he is sometimes hailed as a transformational force for Brazil.

But Mr. da Silva, who helped lift millions out of poverty as president from 2003 to 2010 and still commands the loyalty of many Brazilians, argues that judges and prosecutors are pursuing him in court because they do not have the support to beat him at the ballot box.

On Thursday, in remarks at his party headquarters in São Paulo that often felt like a campaign rally, Mr. da Silva painted himself as the victim of a politically motivated judiciary that would fail in its efforts to derail his bid for the presidency.

He joked one moment, bragging that he had not even bothered to read the 218-page verdict that condemned him to nearly a decade in prison because he had been busy watching his favorite soccer team.

Then, in an attack on the integrity of the justice system, he invoked his poor upbringing and his mother’s legacy. “I learned about honesty from an illiterate woman,” Mr. da Silva said, his eyes welling up.

The theme of unfair judicial interference has given staunch political rivals common ground.

After Mr. da Silva’s conviction, Mr. Temer’s lawyer, Antonio Cláudio Mariz de Oliveira, told reporters that the two veteran politicians were being targeted by prosecutors who were accusing “innocent people” and “destroying reputations” with “hasty allegations.”

Prosecutors and judges reject the claims that they are acting as political kingmakers, not unbiased defenders of the law.

State prosecutors charged Mr. da Silva with money laundering and corruption, accusing him of accepting costly upgrades to a beachfront apartment from a construction company. In exchange, prosecutors said, the company received lucrative contracts from the state-owned oil company, Petrobras.

Mr. Temer was charged last month by federal prosecutors who accuse him of condoning bribes to a jailed politician in order to obstruct a corruption investigation. Both cases stem from a sweeping investigation into corruption involving Petrobras.

Mr. da Silva’s fate is now in the hands of a panel of three judges in the southern city of Porto Alegre. On Thursday, the head of that appeals court said he expected that the court would decide the case before Aug. 15, 2018, the deadline to register as a presidential candidate.

If the court upholds the verdict, Mr. da Silva, one of the founders of the leftist Workers’ Party, could spend nearly 10 years in prison. If the conviction is overturned, the canny politician could return to power and lead Brazil once more.

Marina Silva, a former member of Mr. da Silva’s cabinet who broke ranks with his Workers’ Party in 2009, said the scandals plaguing Brazil’s dominant political parties could be a catalyst for a sweeping transformation that the country needs.

“Brazil’s current crisis requires the reinvention of politics,” said Ms. Silva, who ran for president in 2014 and is widely expected to enter the race next year. “This debate is not limited to Brazil, but extends to the world.”

#Brazil #Lula #Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva #corruption in Brazil #Brazil judiciary

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