The adjective “historic” accompanied the reports about the team’s defeat on Wednesday (29). As is known, 42 senators voted against the choice of Para, while 34 spoke in favor of the Union’s attorney general.
The Senate did not oppose , when it commanded the country.
Floriano and Lula were scorched by the senators’ veto, but there is a difference in degree between these two moments.
The “no” for the Iron Marshal, as the soldier from Alagoas was called, sounded more vehement than that received by the PT leader, after all, five names Floriano trusted were barred from the Senate in an interval of just three months, from September to November 1894.
In that final decade of the 19th century, Brazil was facing a period of transitions, he recalls. Not only was there still a transition from monarchy to republic, proclaimed in 1889; was in the midst of changing from a scenario of consolidated regional powers to a framework of strong centralization.
“By seeking this centralization, Floriano will clash with the Senate, which represented these regional centers”, says Sundfeld.
Furthermore, the openly authoritarian style of the country’s second president caused growing dissatisfaction among parliamentarians.
But this uneasiness between the Executive and the Senate does not completely explain the decisions taken 132 years ago. The Iron Marshal did not care about the scope of the legal repertoire of his chosen ones and was punished for his arrogance.
Meet Floriano’s five nominees, who were rejected by senators on three occasions.
A doctor, the first rejected
The 1891 Constitution was not very specific in relation to the attributes required for a STF minister, a loophole used by Floriano to indicate some names for the court. The Charter only pointed to “remarkable knowledge and reputation”; the following texts, including , began to contemplate the remarkable legal knowledge.
In October 1893, the president chose doctor Cândido Barata Ribeiro for one of the open positions, who took on the role the following month. At that time, it was possible to occupy the position provisionally, before the Senate evaluated the nomination.
A native of Bahia who graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro (now part of the UFRJ), Barata Ribeiro had directed health institutions and been involved in campaigns for the abolition of slavery and the end of the monarchy. He had also been appointed mayor of the Federal District by Floriano, a position he held for six months.
In September 1894, when Barata Ribeiro had already completed 11 months in office, the Senate put his name to a vote and rejected it by a large margin. The refusal was because “he was a doctor and had no legal academic training”, notes Oliveira in his study on the topic.
Two more names rejected by the Senate
In decrees published in September 1894, Floriano appointed other allies to positions as judges of the STF. Of the six names he chose, two were defeated in votes in the Senate the following month: General Inocêncio Galvão de Queiroz and Deputy Attorney of the Republic Antônio Sève Navarro.
The disapproval of Galvão de Queiroz from Bahia was not a surprise. An engineer, he had been decorated for his role in the Paraguayan War and traveled to several states occupying strategic military roles until becoming a general. Afterwards, he was elected senator.
He was an exponent in the military and political fields, but never a reference in legal literature. To veto Galvão de Queiroz’s name, the senators pointed to the same reason presented weeks before to disapprove Barata Ribeiro.
The case of Pernambuco native Sève Navarro seems less obvious. With a degree in law, he held positions as a public prosecutor and judge in cities in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. He worked as a lawyer in — in the illustration above, under his name you can read the phrase “one of the glories of the Pelotas forum”.
From his legal career, he jumped into the political sphere. He was a provincial deputy in Rio Grande do Sul and, later, a federal deputy. Under the presidency of, he became Deputy Attorney of the Republic.
Unlike Galvão de Queiroz, Sève Navarro had followed a successful path in the field of law. Still, his nomination was rejected. It is likely that, in this case, the decision was motivated less by the lawyer’s resume and more by the friction between Floriano and the senators.
Not the general and the director of the Post Office
In October 1894, the Iron Marshal presented his last nominations for the STF – he left the presidency in the middle of the following month. Of Floriano’s five names, two did not receive sufficient votes from the Senate.
The refusal in relation to General Ewerton Quadros followed the reasons given in the cases of Barata Ribeiro and Galvão de Queiroz. Graduated in engineering, the Maranhão native was one of the military commanders with a decisive role during the Federalist Revolution, conflicts that occurred during the Floriano government.
He was definitely a man of arms, not of the Constitution.
A curious fact about Quadros is that, in parallel with his military career, he was an emphatic defender of. He wrote regularly in the press linked to religion and was one of the key figures in the founding of the Brazilian Spiritist Federation, of which he became the first president.
There is less clarity about the reasons that led the Senate to refuse the appointment to the STF of Demosthenes da Silveira Lobo, then director general of Correios. The prestigious senator elected president four years later defended the choice of Silveira Lobo, but the support was insufficient.
For jurist Maria Ângela de Santa Cruz Oliveira, it is possible that the accusations made in the gallery by two other senators, Coelho Rodrigues and Coelho e Campos, were weighed against him.
What did these parliamentarians say against Silveira Lobo? The answers would be in the minutes of the secret sessions at that time, but they were never found.
