Rapporteur for those convicted of the attempted coup d’état, the federal deputy (Solidariedade-SP) told Sheet that the preventive arrest of the former president () in the early hours of this Saturday (22) should give new impetus to the project.
“I believe that prison makes it easier to negotiate dosimetry,” said Paulinho, who continues to rule out a broad pardon. As shown by Sheethe asked for the matter to be resumed next week, given the imminence of the , with the approaching final judgment of the case (when there are no more appeals).
At least initially, however, the Bolsonarists say they will insist on defending the amnesty of the former president and others convicted by the (Supreme Federal Court) in the coup plot, with a complete pardon for the crimes committed and not just the reduction of sentences.
The PL leader in the Chamber, Sóstenes Cavalcante (RJ), tells Sheet which would already mobilize the opposition to obstruct the work of Congress this week, in an attempt to pressure the amnesty bill to be approved.
With Bolsonaro’s arrest, he says, this gains more strength. “I was going to announce the obstruction even before that. Now, it’s just reinforced it. We depend on Hugo [Motta]”, he said. He stated that he has not yet spoken to the president of the Chamber of Deputies this Saturday.
Representative Bia Kicis (PL-DF) told the press in front of the PF regional superintendency, where the former president is imprisoned, that the opposition has been pushing for the project to be voted on. “We never gave up on the Amnesty PL. We know it is necessary. We have Bolsonaro suffering this great injustice, the greatest leader of the right, but we have many other people. Amnesty is necessary,” he said.
The defense of broad amnesty was what stopped the vote on the bill so far, according to the rapporteur’s allies. Members of the Congress center and STF ministers criticized this possibility. Left-wing politicians have also spoken out against voting on a project to pardon the sentences.
In the view of the rapporteur’s allies and members of the center’s leadership, preventive detention could facilitate negotiations around the issue and double the resistance of Bolsonarists, who insist on presenting an amendment in plenary so that the Chamber can decide in a vote whether to approve the reduction of sentences or amnesty.
The President of the Chamber’s strategy, already agreed with allies, is to use the same device adopted to prevent the amendment that attempted to classify criminal factions as terrorist organizations, in the anti-faction project: Motta will state that the matter is unconstitutional and .
Motta even tried to reach an agreement so that the PL would not present the terrorism amendment, but the conversations did not work out, which generated suspicion that the party would also be a battlehorse on the amnesty amendment. This, according to parliamentarians, had made the discussion more difficult.
Although they only defend the reduction of sentences, without complete forgiveness of crimes, congressmen from the center do not want the hassle of voting against amnesty to avoid complaints from right-wing voters on the eve of the election year. Therefore, the attempt to reach an agreement on the topic.
Preventive detention, in the view of parliamentarians, should result in the issue being discussed again in conversations between party leaders and could encourage an agreement to vote on the project and remove the matter from the Chamber’s agenda.
Bolsonaro was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for leading the coup plot, but legislation provides for him to go to a semi-open regime during this period. This Saturday’s preventive detention (22) does not yet address the fulfillment of this sentence, but, according to the STF minister, it would have occurred due to the .
The intention of the Congress leadership is that the project only deals with a reduction in sentences, which will allow those sentenced for a shorter period of time to be removed from prison and reduce Bolsonaro’s period in the closed regime — which, in the center’s view, would facilitate the former president’s support for the presidential candidacy of a politician from outside the family.
The most current version of the project’s opinion, prepared by Paulinho after consultations with STF ministers, reduced the estimated time spent in prison for the former president in a closed regime from 6 years and 10 months to something around 3 years, according to deputies who had access to the text. This is a little longer than the previous version, which was reduced to 2 years and 3 months.
This reduction would occur with the unification of the crimes of violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and coup d’état. Furthermore, the project establishes that, in these cases, the progression regime will be after serving one-sixth of the sentence, not another quarter.
