The internal crisis at the Federal Supreme Court (STF) gained a new chapter this Thursday after Minister Gilmar Mendes made public a message sent to the President of the Court, Edson Fachin, in which he accused him of paralyzing relevant trials through requests for prominence and control of the court’s agenda.
In the message, Gilmar states that “the number of important processes paralyzed” on Fachin’s initiative is impressive and classifies the Court president’s actions as “the filibuster applied to the STF” — an expression used to describe regimental maneuvers designed to delay deliberations. The dean of the STF also says that “the failure to decide on relevant issues is becoming the hallmark” of the current presidency.
According to members of the Supreme Court, Fachin did not respond to the messages sent by Gilmar. The dean’s decision to disclose the content was interpreted within the Court as a deliberate move to publicly expose the tension between ministers and put pressure on the court’s president.
The episode occurred in the same week that Fachin tightened internal rules for distributing petitions presented in old processes to avoid directing requests to ministers.
The change was announced after questions involving the processing of a request presented by the Organized Crime CPI against a decision by Gilmar that suspended the breach of confidentiality of the company Maridt, whose partners include minister Dias Toffoli. The request had been filed within an old process under the dean’s report, which allowed the case to reach his office directly.
When analyzing the issue, Fachin decided to change the Court’s internal procedure to prevent new questions about the direction of petitions. Under the new rule, requests presented in old processes will follow additional mechanisms of administrative validation and prevention analysis before being distributed to ministers.
Continues after advertising
In the message released this Thursday, Gilmar lists a series of trials that, according to him, would be blocked by Fachin’s decisions to remove the cases from the virtual plenary or stop discussing them in the physical plenary. Among them are actions on mineral exploration in indigenous lands, the Ferrogrão project, free justice in the Labor Court and the so-called “lifelong review” of the INSS, which was requested to be highlighted by Fachin last week.
Members of the Supreme Court interviewed privately by GLOBO assess that the exchange of messages exposes a malaise that had already been growing behind the scenes of the Court amid disputes over the internal functioning of the court, especially with the impasse involving the Code of Conduct and what a wing of ministers understands as a “lack of public defense” of the STF by Fachin.
The episode also occurs at a time of internal fragmentation of the STF in the midst of one of the most serious image crises faced by the Court, led by the Master case and clashes over the actions of CPIs.
STF interlocutors state, on the other hand, that prominent requests have been used in processes considered complex or of high institutional repercussion, allowing for a more in-depth debate in the physical plenary. Ministers close to the president also reject the interpretation that there is a deliberate paralysis of trials.
