Janaina Paschoal: what's wrong and what's right about her?

Although most politicians recently spotted by media are involved as part of the extensive list of culprits of Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) and the main characters of the legislative process of Dilma Rousseff's impeachment, there is one figure whose importance had been hidden until a couple of weeks ago: Janaina Paschoal, one of the applicants of Rousseff's process, besides jurist Hélio Bicudo and lawyer Miguel Reale Jr. Since her fiery speech to college students in São Paulo, Paschoal was thrown in the middle of a media circus and had already proven herself both as intelligent and super sincere, which can be seen as a dangerous duality for her allies and her enemies.

According to her professional history, Paschoal is a Ph.D. in Criminal Law by University of São Paulo and, since 2010, she is hired by the same University as a professor and a researcher of prevention of usage of narcotic drugs and, also, economic criminal law and undue interference. The doctoral supervisor of her Ph.D. was Reale Jr., professor at USP and now her colleague in the impeachment process. The main point here is, until this political scandal, Paschoal is in no way different from any other ordinary academic in Brazil. However, since she decided to take part on this process, her importance as spokeswoman of Rousseff's political opposition, she became a very dissonant figure amidst regular politicians.

On September 1st 2015, Paschaol, along with her colleagues, filed a petition to start an impeachment process against the current President of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Rousseff. Their petition was not the first to be filed at the Chamber of Deputies - there were thirty-seven previous requests to open an impeachment process against Rousseff. However, Eduardo Cunha, Chamber's president, approved only the one written by the aforementioned trio. Along with the petition, many pro-impeachment groups, such as Brasil Livre (Free Brazil) and Vem Pra Rua (Come to the Streets), joined the cause by publicly declaring their support to Paschoal et al. proposition. The main accusations of the request are: Rousseff's failure to correctly punish all people involved in Petrobras' scandal, which were investigated by Operação Lava Jato, such as her denials of any irregularities in the enterprise during the presidential run in 2014; Lula's influence peddling, which stands for using his privileged position as former President to benefit Rousseff in her meteoric political career, seen that she hadn't occupied any public chair before 2010 election - her previous work throughout Lula's government had been only by colleagues' indications; and, finally, the infamous "pedalling taxes", which stands for all the complex system of maneuver and manipulate data on public finances of Brazil, in order to circumvent the provision of government accounts and, thus, diverting public funds and destroying the riches of National Treasury.

All the accusations were stated by Paschoal and her colleagues, meanwhile the pro-government parliamentarians criticized and denied them, meaning to disqualify the process and the facts presented by the aforementioned jurists. However, Paschoal's capacity of leading the legislative process was heavily questioned when, during a speech to USP's students and ex-students on April 4th 2016, she overreacted to audience's animation and delivered an impassioned, fiery and exalted speech, talking about the spurious of government platform and claiming that God had sent a legion to cut the wing of snakes that have been perpetuated in the public power. Paschoal was extremely applauded by the presents, but heavily criticized by opponents and some allies for being too theatrical and for her attempt to indoctrinate and catechize college students to an extremist and, therefore, dangerous thought, leading them to join extremist right-wing political parties.

By one side, we can tell that Paschoal's fury throughout her pronouncement can be easily understood if we analyze her position inside the legislative process against Rousseff, as she is deeply involved in the investigation of all irregularities in the government, and also because the very same President belongs to an opposite ideological position. Not only Rousseff defends the left-wing ideology since her early years, seen that she fought as guerrilla fighter during the Brazilian dictatorship, but she also had been a very close ally to Lula since his first election, in 2002. As a result, Paschoal, being a right-wing defender, is absolutely right to use her arguments in order to discredit Rousseff's speech, as seen every day in the Parliament, whichever being the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies. However, by other side, it's clear that Paschoal overreacted during her speech, maybe because of synergy between her and students and allies, maybe because she was using her power of convincement the same way many other euphoric representatives had already done, such as Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, or Adolf Hitler. By this reason, the pro-government parliamentarians were afraid of her, because she can round up both those undecided ones about what to think about the impeachment process as those discredited from leftist cause proposed by PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, standing for Workers' party).

Summing up: Paschoal has the right to deliver her fiery speech and to try convincing whoever she wants to with her words, since leftists have already been doing this for ages, but she isn't the greatest example of a regular rightist defender, since her speech is as extremist as Lula's or any other left-wing representatives. So she has the guts to take over leftists and say her truth on their faces, but she must be equally prepared to hear their responses, which can come in the same intensity or worse. The most recent proof of Paschoal's inability to deal with this was her testimony in Senate on last Friday (29/04), in which she was pranked by her colleague Randolfe Rodrigues (Rede/AP, standing for Sustainability Network in the state of Amapá) - using his skills as orator, he set an oral trap to Paschoal, making her defend an eventual Michel Temer's impeachment process - Temer is the current Vice-President and he eventually would take place as President if Rousseff were impeached, but he also has a big list of crimes he had committed and could be also dropped from his position if the Federal Justice accepts the accusations against him. Paschoal fell in the trap and accidentally defended Temer's dropout and, after noticing the mistake, she was embarrassed and tried to explain herself, which was taken for granted by the parliamentarian, since she had impassionedly defended Temer from the very same accusations previously on the testimony. These happenings lead us to conclude that, although Paschoal is extremely prepared to defend her ideals, she is still a regular college professor and has no left field to deal with the acumen of these smart-ass parliamentarians who are discussing Roussef's eventual exit.