The continuation of the mandates of deputies Glauber Braga (PSOL-RJ) and Carla Zambelli (PL-SP) represented a defeat for the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), and for his predecessor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), who personally engaged in trying to approve the impeachment of the two, and even provoked a public disagreement between the two.
In the PP group’s WhatsApp group, Lira said that the management of the House “is a mess” and that the House needs to be reorganized. He also regretted “the lack of solidarity” of party leaders and deputies with Motta, after Glauber sat in his chair and was forcibly removed by the legislative police, and expressed concern about the management of his successor.
Lira was responsible for building the deal that elected Motta to the post, but relations have not been closer since the Bolsonaro riot, when Lira was called in to resolve the crisis. The former president was the main defender of the dismissal of Glauber, his enemy and who denounced to the STF (Federal Supreme Court) the direction of parliamentary amendments in committee without transparency.
Contacted, the President of the House made no comment.
Despite Motta and Lira’s request to the leaders to impeach Glauber, a large part of the lower clergy of the House preferred to maintain the mandate of their colleague, because they understood that kicking an MBL activist who was persecuting him was not a sufficient reason for impeachment. Without enough votes for this, the alternative constructed was the suspension of the mandate for six months, approved by 318 votes to 141.
The Speaker of the House also tried to articulate with the leaders the loss of the mandate of Zambelli, imprisoned in Italy, but there was not enough support. In this case, there was a mixture of assessment that the process was legally fragile, a message to the STF (Federal Supreme Court), which had noted the loss of mandate, and also fear of repercussions among the electorate.
Politicians from the center of the states most aligned with Bolsonarism reported to Leaf who were in favor of removing Zambelli’s mandate, but who could not vote that way so as not to displease their constituents — in this case, the end of secret voting, approved in 2013 by Congress to facilitate the impeachment of colleagues accused of crimes, ended up having the opposite effect and served to preserve the mandate.
Other deputies also claim that – as Lira expressed in messages to PP deputies – Motta failed to coordinate better with the parties before putting the issue to a vote. According to them, holding the joint session gave Glauber more strength, because it would be inconsistent to impeach a deputy for kicking someone and to maintain the mandate of a parliamentarian who ran armed after a person in the street.
Motta’s allies justify that the Speaker of the House sought to share the decision with the House and that everyone will bear responsibility for their vote. For this reason, he simply informed the college of leaders that he would put the matter to a vote, without consulting their opinion first.
The deputies heard by Leaf They also affirm that the result of Wednesday’s session (10) reinforces the tendency of deputy Alexandre Ramagem (PL-RJ), sentenced to prison for participation in the putschist plot and on the run in the United States for two months, to see his mandate in plenary preserved. The Chamber has already approved by 315 votes to 143 the closure of the case against him, before the trial.
The results of this Wednesday (10) also highlight the difficulty of dismissing a deputy by the House. Besides that the necessary majority is 257 votes, which requires coordination between different ideological wings, many MPs stressed that such votes cause tensions and leave no one happy.
Another factor is the dissatisfaction of most MPs with the STF. In the cases of Zambelli and Ramagem, the vote in favor of maintaining their mandates directly contradicts the condemnation of the loss of mandate and serves as a message to the court, the parliamentarians say.
Motta’s understanding is that the Constitution establishes that the plenary of the House gives the final word regarding the conviction of the STF for loss of mandate. However, he adopted different procedures than in the case of Zambelli and Ramagem, lengthening and speeding up the MP process.
Zambelli’s case was previously sent to the CCJ (Constitution and Justice Commission), where it was processed for more than four months, while Ramagem’s case will be analyzed directly in plenary next Wednesday (17).
The case of Eduardo Bolsonaro is different, because the risk of impeachment is due to exceeding the number of absences from plenary sessions and not to a conviction by the STF. Usually the investigation into absences does not take place until March of the following year, but Motta also decided to speed up the process: he gave Eduardo a deadline to defend and declared that the Council would decree the loss of mandate next week.
“MP Eduardo Bolsonaro already has a certain number of absences which are sufficient for his mandate to be revoked. (…) We publish today this absence from the mandate and (…) also the deadline so that he can, in five sessions, present his defense,” Motta said on Tuesday.
To achieve this, the majority of the seven members of the Board of Directors, including Motta, must decide to lose their mandate.
Although the dismissal of Eduardo is considered certain and was even announced by Motta, the interpretation of the PL deputies is that the defeat of the President of the House against Zambelli and Glauber could have weakened him to the point of being contested by the Council itself. In other words, there would be a loophole to save Eduardo.
This year, Motta has already suffered a defeat at the Table. He proposed the immediate punishment of the mutinous Bolsonarist deputies, but the House leadership formed a majority to delay the result, sending the files to the Department of Internal Affairs.
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