Nothing to Laugh About

In prep course I had a History teacher who used to say that for a country to install a democratic state it would have to adopt three measures: division of the state into Montesquieu’s tripartite system (executive, legislature and judiciary), the use of a constitution and freedom of speech. He called them the “Democracy Kit”.
As time passed it became almost like a trend countries adopting Democracy, always using the blessed Kit. Although the Brazilian Government has had its problems with military regimes, since 1988 we can say that Brazil readopted its former democratic state and things were going pretty well for us. However, today, 22 years later, the phantoms of authoritarianism came back to haunt us in a very delicate moment: election.
It is no secret (and that’s for some time) that the Brazilian politicians are reason for jokes. And one of the most intriguing things about this is that the humorists don’t even need to distort the fact to make it absurd, and consequently funny, the scandals are ridiculous by themselves. That’s reason why we gave ourselves the nickname of “The country of the ready-made joke”.
Because of that we have developed within the past 20 years a very special interest for jokes about politicians. Unfortunately our Judiciary has decided that this is no longer a proper thing to do on the television and on the radio, during the election period. The majority of the Brazilian people is not interested in politics and just gets to know about the scandals and corruption schemes because of humoristic programs and their parodies. With that in mind is ironic, at minimum, that our population is deprived of this kind of information during the election period. Specially because television and radio have a way bigger range than other communication means in our country.
The worst part is that even politicians in their advertisements try to be funny and ridiculous, just to get votes, such as Tiririca. This norm that’s been applied by our judiciary is a counter service to our country and our elections, since, instead of helping the population choosing a candidate, it’s getting into their way.