20:57. In Brazil, it is still May 3 - the International Day of Freedom of Expression. Folha de S.Paulo gave it little space in a corner easily overlooked just today: Freedom House has given the country 46 points, meaning it enjoys "partial freedom of expression". The reasons to justify the assessment are all precise: journalists murdered, lawsuits over blog posts, influence of firms and others on what is eventually published and... ongoing discussions to pass law restricting freedom even further.
That number of points seems to take into account the idea that other countries are 'worse', since a scenario which shows such conditions should not be considered "partially" free. It is, better saying, a case of mock freedom.
Moreover, freedom cannot be 'half' in practice. We understand 'partial freedom is the result of a methodology widely used. It assumes the variable 'freedom' is continual, whereas it is in fact discrete: you, e.g., are free or not.
The former judge of the Supreme Court who presided over during the case of 'mensalão' declared, in a FGV law course class this morning, that it is now an era of transparence in Brazil. However, that can be easily challenge. We will elaborate on this in the next post.
