Evangelical leaders lamented the failure of the (Supreme Federal Court), but placed the episode on the president’s account ().
The attorney general of the Union, on Wednesday (29), the number of votes needed to become minister of the court, after the president of the, (-AP), opposed the nomination.
to the appointment, despite the name of the religious divide with mandate. The divergence came from the fact that he was close to Lula and was read by the segment, mostly on the right, as aligned with the left.
Bishop Robson Rodovalho, founder of the Sara Nossa Terra Church, states that Messias did well in the hearing, but faced dissatisfaction with the Lula government against him. “All the dissatisfaction, all the government’s unfulfilled promises fell into his lap,” says Rodovalho.
He says he understands that Messias “explained himself a lot during the hearing” about actions he took as attorney general. In the meeting with the senators, Lula’s nominee said he was a topic raised by conservatives due to a (Federal Council of Medicine) vetoing a procedure necessary for legal abortion in advanced pregnancies.
During the hearing, Messias also justified requests for arrest during coup attacks on January 8, an issue also raised by the opposition. “I will never be happy about adopting measures restricting someone’s freedom, I did it out of obligation, out of a duty of office. […] I didn’t do it with joy, I did it with pain,” he said.
Despite having defended the nomination, Rodovalho says that evangelical leaders view the rejection with ease, as “despite the Messiah’s merits, he is very positioned on the left”.
“Now the possibility arises that the next president could nominate this vacancy. And it may not be Lula,” said Rodovalho, who is also president of Concepab (National Council of Pastors’ Councils in Brazil).
Apostle César Augusto, founder of the Fonte da Vida Church, says he regrets the rejection, for not taking another evangelical to the STF, but believes that the biggest defeat is the Lula government’s.
“I think that people did not vote against the legal capacity or the person of the Messiah, even though he has positions that some conservatives do not understand, but they voted against President Lula’s action.”
The pastor says that another evangelical in the Supreme Court would be important for the segment, but that “life goes on”.
“It didn’t work, it didn’t work. Now it’s time to move forward. The biggest defeat is for the Lula government, for sure.”
For pastor Silas Malafaia, president of ADVEC (Assembly of God Victory in Christ), “Messiah’s defeat is not exactly his, it is Lula’s crushing defeat”, because the nomination is the president’s right.
“The one who was defeated was Lula, and with a message for the STF”, Malafaia told Sheet. The pastor said he believed that any nominee of the politician would be defeated. “It has nothing to do with Messiah, it has everything to do with Lula, with this political moment and the Judiciary’s interference in everything everywhere, becoming a terribly political institution.”
Before the defeat, Malafaia had criticized Messias, whom he called a “gospel leftist”, but did not oppose the nomination for, according to him, a matter of coherence and respect for the president’s prerogative.
Pentecostal pastor William Douglas, in turn, who is a federal judge at the TRF-2 (Federal Regional Court of the 2nd Region) and professor of constitutional law, said he was “deeply saddened” by the result.
Despite his conservative profile, he states that he does not consider it correct to mix “ideological divergence with assessment of capacity”.
“In my assessment, the Senate was wrong,” he declared in a statement. “The Constitution gives the President of the Republic the prerogative to nominate ministers to the Federal Supreme Court, with the Senate being responsible for rejecting them only when constitutional requirements are absent — and not for political, circumstantial or convenience reasons.”
William Douglas, who in the administration of (), agrees that the rejection was not directed at Messias, but at the political context involving President Lula.
According to him, decisions like Wednesday’s “do not affect the name of those who were rejected, but they reveal the criteria that prevailed in their rejection — and this leaves marks on the standard of Justice that the Republic chooses for itself”.
