The base text of the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) that provides for parliamentarians to be prosecuted criminally in the Federal Supreme Court () was approved on Tuesday (16) in.
After analysis of highlights by the deputies, scheduled for this Wednesday (17), the text goes to the Senate.
The “PEC of prerogatives”, as it was called by those who endorse it, or “PEC of Armage”, a nickname given by its critics, promotes changes in the article that deals with parliamentary immunity, making the norm similar to what.
During this period, as a rule of Article 53 of the 1988 Constitution, the House or Senate had to approve a license for the STF to prosecute parliamentary.
But over the age of 13, there has been criticism that the rule would be resulting in impunity – with some cases of parliamentarians who were never processed.
Different surveys show that licenses were almost always denied – many of them after being processed for years without analysis, benefiting suspected crime parliamentarians.
“During the period of the Constitution of 88, when the text they want to approve was now in force, no investigation against parliamentarian was authorized. Not even in case of murder, as there was. Nor in cases of corruption, as there was. Not in case of trafficking, as there was,” said Deputy Kim Kataguri (União Brasil-SP), who voted against PEC.
“More than 300 investigation requests were made when there was this wording in the Constitution of 88, the congress must allow, and none of them was prosecuted criminally.”
The PEC predicts that the approval of the congress must be deliberated within 90 days from the receipt of the order issued by the Supreme Court. If the license is denied, the process is suspended as long as the mandate of the parliamentarian lasts.
The proposal to assess the arrest of parliamentarians was maintained in PEC.
Case of the ‘Motorcycle Deputy’
Some cases were emblematic – and contributed to the image in public opinion that the 1988 rules promoted parliamentarians impunity.
These episodes impeded in 2001 to the approval of Constitutional Amendment 35, which extinguished the demand for an endorsement of Congress to open criminal proceedings against parliamentarians.
“Given numerous facts that occurred at the time, the concern was installed to prevent immunity from degenerating as a mechanism that could cover criminal acts that should not escape the performance of the judiciary,” says an article in the Journal of Legislative Information (a Senate publication) on parliamentary immunity in Brazil before and after Constitutional Amendment 35, 2001.
One of the facts cited in the article is the case of Hildebrando Pascoal, former collapse and parliamentary who became known in the country as a “chainsaw deputy”.
He was accused of heading the organization of a death squad and convicted of murder, gang formation and drug trafficking. Arrested since 1999, he was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.
His most notorious crime was the death of mechanic Agílson Firmino, whose body was quartered with a chainsaw. Firmino’s son, 13, was also killed. In addition, two witnesses were murdered.
Hildebrando Pascoal was a federal deputy and was the target of the drug trafficking CPI.
In February 1999, the STF opened an inquiry to investigate Pascoal’s involvement with extermination groups in Acre.
The inquiry was launched by the Supreme Court President, Minister Celso de Mello, based on a report prepared by the Council for the Defense of the Rights of the Human Person, of the Ministry of Justice.
The next step would be the opening of a lawsuit, but for this it would be necessary for the House of Representatives to grant a license to the Supreme Court.
The House, however, chose to revoke Pascoal’s mandate based on CPI investigations and he was tried in the first instance for the crimes.
In 2018, in trial on the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to judge federal deputies and senators for common crimes, Minister Dias Toffoli denied that the Supreme Court had been conniving with the impunity of parliamentarians in the past and cited the case of Pascoal.
According to Toffoli, in the past, Congress rarely granted this license, and preferred to revoke parliamentarians to face the Common Justice – as happened with Hildebrando Pascoal.
Non -Gulliver Restaurant
Another notorious episode involving parliamentary immunity happened in 1993, when the governor of Paraíba, Ronaldo Cunha Lima, shot a political rival – former governor Tarcisio Buryy – at the Gulliver restaurant in João Pessoa, in a case of great national repercussion.
Burity was in a coma a few days and died almost ten years after the attack.
According to news published at the time, Cunha Lima was arrested by the Federal Police, but got you have a body. In 1995, he was elected senator of the Republic and began to have parliamentary immunity that would last for all his eight -year term.
Over this period, the Federal Supreme Court tried to sue Cunha Lima, but failed. In September 1995, the Supreme Court requested license to proceed with senator -related investigations.
This request was only analyzed by the Senate four years later, in 1999 – and denied.
The process only ran back to the Supreme Court after December 2001, when Constitutional Amendment 35 was approved, which abolished the need for a license to open a lawsuit against members of the.
Between 2003 and 2007, the lawsuit against Cunha Lima ran in the Supreme Court and was about to be tried. On October 31, 2007, the politician resigned his mandate as a federal deputy, claiming that he wanted to be tried by the Jury Court of João Pessoa.
In his letter of resignation, he said he wanted to be tried “only as a citizen.”
The resignation was criticized by the rapporteur of the case in the Supreme Court, then Minister Joaquim Barbosa, and other jurists, who said the maneuver would allow the action to take more years to be tried.
Buricy’s family reacted with indignation.
“If 14 years have passed so far, do you think they will judge in four years? I don’t believe it,” said Buricy widow Glauce.
“He spent 14 years deceiving justice. Now, when he knew he was going to be tried, he renounced to be tried by the Jury Court. It’s a clowning.”
Ronaldo Cunha Lima died in 2012 – a 20 years after the incident at the Gulliver restaurant – without the process being completed.
‘Strengthening’ or ‘impunity’
During Tuesday night vote in the House of Representatives of PEC that increases protection to parliamentarians, the president of the house, Deputy Hugo Motta (Republicans/PB), said that the change “strengthens the mandate of parliamentarians” and resumes the original spirit of the Constitution.
“It is nothing more than the return to the 1988 constitutional text. Text that was approved by the then constituent. It is a text that guarantees, in my assessment, the strengthening of the parliamentary mandate of each one that is in this house. This is not a government or opposition agenda, PT or PL, right or left.”
But other deputies were against this view.
“This is the PEC of impunity,” said Mrs Fernanda Melchionna (PSOL/RS).
“Those who dare compare what the constituent process was, in which parliamentarians were persecuted for facing the dictatorship, has to use a lot of peroba oil for so much shame in the face. […] The people know that what is being voted here is scandalous. “
