Before the decision of Minister Alexandre de Moraes to declare the loss of the mandate of Carla Zambelli (PL-SP), the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), had promised the members of the Court that the Chamber itself would resolve the problem and dismiss the parliamentarian.
The promise was made during private meetings with ministers, and this is what led Motta to decide, last Tuesday, the dismissal of Zambelli as well as that of Glauber Braga (PSOL-RJ), after a maneuver by the Constitution and Justice Commission resulted in by approving the opinion on the end of the parliamentarian’s mandate.
Yet it failed. In the vote that finally took place on Wednesday (10), only 227 deputies voted for his impeachment, thirty fewer than necessary to expel him from the House. As reported by O GLOBO, 69 deputies from the PP, União Brasil, Republicans, PSD and MDB, parties that usually guarantee support for Motta, were absent from the session to avoid having to dismiss Zambelli.
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The result was deemed “unacceptable” by ministers, who imposed a second humiliation on Motta the next day. Moraes overturned the deputies’ decision and declared Zambelli stripped of the mandate, concluding that the deputies’ vote was marked by “obvious unconstitutionality” and a “lack of respect for the principles of legality, morality and impersonality”, in addition to a “flagrant abuse of purpose”.
Indeed, the Constitution categorically stipulates that a deputy convicted criminally upon a final conviction (that is to say when there is no further appeal) will lose his mandate. This is precisely the case with Zambelli.
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“Hugo delivers absolutely nothing to anyone and does not have the thermometer of the Chamber,” says an ally of the former President of the Chamber Arthur Lira (PP-AL), reproducing the feeling that has taken hold both in the Centrão and in the Supreme Court. “He assured the Supreme Court that Zambelli had been removed. He just doesn’t know what direction the group is taking.”
Lira himself called his successor’s difficult management a “scam.”
In June, Zambelli reported his escape from Brazil, in an attempt to avoid serving the 10-year prison sentence imposed – unanimously – by the first panel of the Supreme Court for his involvement in a hacker invasion of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) system.
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“Hugo delivers absolutely nothing to anyone and does not have the thermometer of the Chamber,” says an ally of the former President of the Chamber Arthur Lira (PP-AL), reproducing the feeling that has taken hold both in the Centrão and in the Supreme Court. “He assured the Supreme Court that Zambelli had been removed. He just doesn’t know what direction the group is taking.”
Lira himself called his successor’s difficult management a “scam.”
In June, Zambelli reported his escape from Brazil, in an attempt to avoid serving the 10-year prison sentence imposed – unanimously – by the first panel of the Supreme Court for his involvement in a hacker invasion of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) system.
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At the beginning of June, she left for Rome, where she believed herself to be “untouchable” because she also had Italian nationality, but ended up being arrested.
For the Italian public prosecutor, the extradition of Zambelli meets all requirements required by legislation – and the parliamentarian, now dismissed, is not the target of political persecution and her defense was not hindered in the process which led to her conviction within the STF.
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In the opinion of lawyer Erminio Carmelo Amelio, Zambelli, freely, knowingly and voluntarily, ordered the invasion of CNJ systems through the planning, hiring and operational management of a person, the hacker Walter Delgatti Neto, who had the technical skills and means necessary to execute the plan, with the aim of modifying the information.
Zambelli was also sentenced by the Federal Supreme Court to five years and three months in prison for illegal possession of a firearm and illegal coercion in the episode in which the deputy chased a man with a gun in his hand in São Paulo on the eve of the second round of the 2022 elections.
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