Brazil’s left-wing loses a procedural battle over Bolsonaro’s impeachment

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Justice Cármen Lúcia of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) rejected a petition for an injunction in which federal deputy Rui Falcão (Worker’s Party PT) and former São Paulo mayor and 2018 presidential candidate Fernando Haddad (Worker’s Party PT) asked the court to force the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP), to analyze an impeachment motion against President Jair Bolsonaro that was submitted to Parliament more than a year ago, on May 21, 2020.

In a decision issued on Monday, 19, and published on Wednesday, 21, Carmen Lucia considered that the injunction did not meet the “constitutional and legal requirements for its valid processing” in the STF.

The judiciary pointed out that the “imposition of immediate processing of the complaint on the investigation of the responsibility of the President of the Republic, by the judiciary, violates the principle of separation of powers.

In the injunction petition, the Workers’ Party members pointed to the inaction of the President of the Chamber “by refusing to exercise the judgment of summary admissibility that belongs to him in action for a crime of accountability.”

The impeachment motion by Haddad and Rui Falcão was submitted to Congress after the president participated in an action with banners calling for the closure of Congress and the STF and the reinstatement of Institutional Law No. 5 – the harshest of the dictatorship – in front of Army headquarters, but the Chamber President has taken no action for more than a year.

In her 16-page decision, Cármen pointed out that there is no time limit set by law for processing an impeachment request.

The Justice also cited that the analysis on the “convenience and opportunity” of starting the impeachment process is only incumbent on the President of the Chamber after proving the existence of the formal requirements.

“Neither can the President of the Chamber of Deputies initiate impeachment proceedings without meeting the formal requirements of the submitted petition (description of certain facts with indicative evidence of the crime of responsibility, condition of citizens of the petitioners, among others, listed by law), nor can he be compelled to follow the submitted plea by a judicial decision by which the judicial authority substitutes itself for that legislative authority,” Carmen Lucia noted.