The Minister of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Gilmar Mendes, said that the decision to suspend different provisions of the impeachment law regarding the ministers of the Court aims to prevent distortions in the process and avoid political use of the mechanism. According to him, the current model – dating from 1950 – was not fully accepted by the 1988 Constitution and leaves room for practices of “abusive constitutionalism”.
In an interview with the STF em Foco profile, published this Sunday (12/7), Gilmar pointed out that certain parts of the 1950 rule were not accepted by the 1988 Constitution and today fuel a scenario of “abusive constitutionalism”, in which demands for impeachment are now used as an instrument of pressure against the judiciary.
“As for the STF, the intention to subject ministers to impeachment, in these times, is recent — the result of 2018 until now, since the election of Bolsonaro. In the past, no one discussed this issue. And then various attempts began, usually attributing to judges a fault in the execution of a judicial act: granted an injunction, did not grant an injunction, decided in this or that way,” said Gilmar.
The dean continued by affirming that “it does not make sense that the President of the Republic, to be impeached, first goes through a judgment in the Chamber, with two-thirds of the votes, and then through a judgment in the Senate, with a conviction by two-thirds of the votes.”
“Now, would a minister of the Supreme Court be removed from office with decisions by a simple majority or an absolute majority? We need to reread that. And that is a bit of what we are proposing in this debate, by responding to these challenges (…) Nobody wants to stop being responsible for their own actions,” the minister underlined.
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Gilmar continued: “And it is curious that this is done with a Court that has fulfilled an ambitious role, that of keeping democracy intact. When we walk around, people say: ‘Wow, you have done something very important: saved democracy,’ because everything could have collapsed if it had not been for the firmness, the concentration of the work that we do here,” concluded the dean.
Gilmar’s preliminary ruling suspended sections of the impeachment bill last week. Analyzing the request for review by the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), the minister said that there was no basis for revising the measure, which, according to the decision, restricts the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) in the possibility of presenting impeachment requests against the ministers of the Court.
The analysis of the file will be carried out by the virtual plenary of the STF between December 12 and 19, when ministers will vote on whether or not to approve the preliminary decision.
Decision
In addition to suspending certain provisions of the law, the dean also established that a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate is necessary to approve these requests.
The decision was taken as part of the revision of several articles of the Impeachment Law (Law 1,079/1950) relating to the process of dismissal of Ministers of the Court. The measure was issued jointly in the complaints for non-compliance with fundamental precepts (ADPF) 1.259 and 1.260, presented by the Solidariedade party and the Association of Brazilian Magistrates (AMB).
For the minister, the reduced quorum directly affects the constitutional guarantees of the judiciary, such as life and irremovability, weakening the autonomy of the judiciary and the legitimacy of its decisions.
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