After five months of waiting, the Attorney General of the Union (AGU), Jorge Messias, nominated by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for a vacancy on the Federal Supreme Court (STF), met with the President of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre (União-AP). The hearing at the House’s Constitution and Justice Committee (CCJ) is scheduled for Wednesday.
The meeting between Messias and Alcolumbre, which took place last week, also had the participation of STF ministers Cristiano Zanin and Alexandre de Moraes, and senator Rodrigo Pacheco (PSB-MG). The information was revealed by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and confirmed by Globo by people who accompany the articulation.
The meeting took place in Brasília and was organized by common interlocutors. According to reports made by Messias’ allies, the conversation was direct, but without explicit political commitments on the part of Alcolumbre.
The Senate president’s office did not respond at the time of publication. Messiah did not comment.
According to reports of the conversation, Alcolumbre did not signal any public nod of support for the nomination, nor did he commit to acting to release votes from parliamentarians under his influence. The government expected a public nod from the president with the aim of easing the environment. Today, as the Globo showed, , a part out of fear of Alcolumbre.
Even so, the president of the Senate indicated that he will guarantee a smooth institutional environment for the hearing at the CCJ and for the vote in plenary.
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Present at the meeting, Pacheco was Alcolumbre’s favorite to take the seat in the Supreme Court, opened after the early retirement of Luís Roberto Barroso. Lula, however, opted for a name he strictly trusts, as he has done in this third term with the nominations of Zanin and Flávio Dino.
Since November, when the president announced the appointment of the Union’s attorney general, Messias had been waiting for a conversation with the president of the Senate. Upset with Lula’s choice, however, Alcolumbre had been avoiding the meeting. The meeting thus marks a turning point in the relationship between the two.
Behind the scenes, Messias has described the impasse as a result of external factors and signaled that he understands Alcolumbre’s discomfort. Even so, the president of the Senate has maintained until now the strategy of not engaging his closest group in defending the name nominated by Lula.
To reach the 41 votes necessary for approval, Messias has intensified his schedule of visits to offices and private conversations with senators in recent weeks. Today he has 26 declared favorable votes and needs to raise 16 more among the undecided voters.
