The TSE’s decision may allow politicians not eligible until October to stand in the November elections | Elections 2020

In practice, the decision may allow some candidates convicted of illegal acts in 2012, whose punishment ends in October, to participate in the elections. The first round was postponed due to the pandemic and is scheduled for November 15.

• Elections 2020: check the dates of the electoral calendar

This decision applies to candidates, for example, convicted of abuse of economic and political power, but does not reach candidates with criminal convictions.

The postponement of the elections was made in an amendment to the Constitution enacted in July this year, without any reference to the Clean Registry Act. With the calendar change, the date left the range of ineligibility for those sentenced in 2012.

The TSE ministers analyzed a query made by federal deputy Célio Studart (PV-CE) on the application of the Clean Registry Law in this scenario. The legislation says that candidates convicted of abuse of power during the campaign, for example, are ineligible for eight years.

Under current rule, the starting point for counting the period of ineligibility is the date of the election on which the illegal act occurred. The term ends the same day, eight years later.

As the date changed, the PV deputy consulted the TSE in an attempt to prevent the mismatch of dates from benefiting politicians with dirty backgrounds.

In his opinion to the court, the deputy electoral attorney general Renato Brill de Góes argued that the period of ineligibility should be valid until the end of the eighth year of sanction, and not only until the date of the elections. The thesis was not accepted by the ministers.

In the analysis, the members of the TSE highlighted the importance of the Law to Clean the File for morality in the electoral scenario, but stressed that the application of ineligibility must be done strictly, because it directly affects fundamental rights, among them, the participation in elections.

The ministers also considered that Congress did not analyze the issue in the amendment that changed the date of the elections. Therefore, in the TSE’s assessment, the rule could not be defined on an understanding of the court alone.