Sanctioned in 2010, the Clean Record Law turns 15 on Wednesday (4) with an inheritance in dispute between proposals in Congress to make rules of ineligibility and understandings of what advance in legal provision.
As a result of a popular initiative project that obtained more than 1 million signatures, the text reached, in a decade and a half, names such as the President () in 2018 and the former president (), ineligible by 2030.
Today, projects in and in the aim of reducing, unifying and changing deadlines of ineligibility, while judicial agencies have adopted, on the other hand, expansive interpretation, vetoing candidates accused of link with the crime.
Lawyer Bruno Andrade, a member of Abradep (Brazilian Academy of Electoral and Political Law), says that the Clean Record Law, initially thought to moralize the policy, did not fully comply with expectations, resulting in a disenchantment of the population.
On the one hand, there were cases of corruption and ethical deviations. On the other hand, the legislation generated a judicialization of politics, with causes of ineligibility and increasingly dependent electoral decisions rather than popular vote, he says.
“This makes an increase in a crisis of representativeness in relation to politicians and political parties and greater instability in municipalities, states, which have to make new elections to each court decision,” says Andrade.
Federal Deputy Bibo Nunes (PL-RS) is those who feel contradicted. He is the author of a proposal that reduces the time of removal in the event of abuse of power or misuse of media – process type by which Bolsonaro was convicted – from 8 to 2 years.
“There is common law, the Penal Code, the law of administrative misconduct, many ways to punish a corrupt politician or a criminal politician other than these eight years,” the congressman justifies to Sheet.
The deputy also says that the judiciary, especially the (Supreme Federal Court), is politicized and that the eight -year period of the Clean Record Law serves only to pursue who is right, citing (PRTB), convicted in recent months in two cases – which are still pending resources.
He engaged at the beginning of the year, driven by the former president’s allies, but he cooled. Bibo Nunes states, however, that discussions will continue ongoing and believe in approval if it arrives at the plenary.
Another project that is being processed in Congress, proposed by Deputy Dani Cunha (União Brasil-RJ), daughter of former mayor Eduardo Cunha, would change the beginning of the deadlines. The PL would be voted in March in the Senate, but it was.
The lawyer and former judge Márlon Reis, one of the creators of the Clean Record, says there is no reason to change the law-nothing. According to him, everyone who is proposing “improvements” in this legislation actually want to reduce its effectiveness.
“The main basis of all mobilization for the approval of the law was the work to avoid entering the elective mandates of people who were known to have indicative in their previous life who advised against electoral participation,” he says.
The Clean Record changed the law of ineligibilities, which has already imposed some restrictions. What the 2010 legislation did was to incorporate more hypotheses, to make the criteria more strict, as well as to increase the deadlines of ineligibility, which were shorter, three years.
The main change brought by the new law was the political removal after conviction issued by a collegiate judicial body, and before the res judicata, that is, no more appeals against the decision.
Last year, the Electoral Justice showed that it can further harden the parameters. To stop accused of bonding with criminal organizations, magistrates began vetoing candidates even without conviction.
It occurred at the time of analysis of the records and was based on the reading of a constitutional norm on ineligibility. The rule alludes to the candidate’s previous life, administrative probity and morality.
It establishes, however, that a complementary law will specify these situations and, neither in the law of ineligibilities, nor in the Clean Record Law, which prevents the candidacy only for the condition of defendant or accused.
Bruno Andrade, a lawyer and a member of Abradep, claims to see the decision as a misconception and an excessively wide interpretation to block candidates for conduct that are not provided for by law.
According to the researcher, “as ineligibility is a restriction on a political right, a fundamental right, the most basic doctrine says that it is not broadly interpreted legal norm when it is restrictive.”
The (Superior Electoral Court) after the TRE-RJ (Fluminense Regional Electoral Court) which rejected the registration of candidacy for a suspect of the crime, surpassing an understanding already established in the Superior Court itself.
