A PGR (Attorney General’s Office) issued a dissenting opinion in relation to the decision that suspended an electoral survey by the Atlas Institute, opening a debate on political exemption within the STF (Supreme Federal Court).
The research in question pointed to a significant drop on Flávio Bolsonaro’s voting intentions after the case Dark Horseand his suspension was ordered by minister Kassio Nunes Marques, president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court).
The policy analyst Clarissa Oliveira assessed that it represents a clear message on the limits of judicial intervention in electoral matters, especially in a pre-presidential campaign context.
“A ‘political contamination’ on issues linked to Electoral Justice comes as background of discussions and the debate that we have seen taking shape in recent days”, Clarissa said to Live CNN this Tuesday (23). She highlighted an excerpt from the PGR opinion that she considers especially expressive.
The document states that it is not up to the Electoral Court to “take on a role of curator of the reliability of search results from a perspective consequentialistinsofar as the judicial intervention it must be minimalist and sufficient to avoid objectively proven dysfunctionalities”.
In the analyst’s assessment, the PGR’s message is that the judicial decision should not be taken impact-based that it may have on a given candidate.
“It doesn’t matter if Flávio Bolsonaro had or didn’t have a drop in the polls. Like institute methodology was defined with certain criteria, it was these criteria that led to the fall of Flávio Bolsonaro in the survey, or was it?”, Clarissa observed.
The analyst also noted that the PT and the federal government have used the suspension of research as a argument to question Nunes Marques’ impartiality.
