Minister Gilmar Mendes, Dean of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), stated this Thursday (4) that the section of the Impeachment Law that deals with the removal of ministers from the Court has “expired”, that is, it has lost its validity due to the action of time.
Mendes defended the preliminary (provisional) decision in which he suspended this section of the law and established the interpretation that only the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) has the legitimacy to denounce Supreme Court ministers to the Senate. He denied that the decision was taken to protect ministers. “It’s not about that,” he said.
During a panel on legal security promoted by the Jota portal, the minister justified the urgency of the measure by stating that “the text and the context” demand immediate action from the Judiciary, given the electoral use of the legislation and the 81 requests for impeachment against Supreme Court ministers that accumulate in the Senate, the majority against minister Alexandre de Moraes.
When asked, Mendes stated that he made the decision in the face of “so many requests for impeachment, with people announcing that they will carry out electoral campaigns to obtain a majority or two-thirds of the Senate to impeach the Supreme Court minister”.
He highlighted the antiquity of the 1950 law and its incompatibility with the 1988 Constitution, according to his view. “It is recommended that another Impeachment Law be voted on”, suggested the minister.
Earlier, Supreme Court Minister Flávio Dino was also asked about the topic. He said he did not want to anticipate a vote, as the matter is on the plenary agenda, but also emphasized the large number of impeachment requests awaiting analysis by the Senate Presidency.
For Dino, the legislation was not designed to be used as it is now, and the current 81 impeachment requests are “a factual picture that defies reality” and that has never occurred and does not occur “in any country in the world”.
“It is necessary to analyze to see if these are in fact imputations that deserve any plausibility, or if we are dealing with yet another chapter of political dispute”, observed the minister.
Dino defended Mendes for having issued an injunction in the case, even though the urgency of the matter does not seem evident. “It’s a decision-making technique that exists everywhere,” he said about the referendum, in which the decision is first taken by a minister so that it can be validated or not by the collegiate body immediately afterwards.
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