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Amid the coronavirus pandemic, President Jair Bolsonaro issued an interim measure to try to protect the authorities and public servants from civil and administrative lawsuits stemming from any irregular decision made by them in this period of calamity. In practice, the law can even benefit the president himself, accused of being negligent in leading the pandemic by minimizing it on many occasions. Not by chance, it came to be called an “exclusion of illegality,” as was the project that sought to exempt the police from guilt that killed under violent emotion.
In its text, the provisional measure establishes that during the covid-19 pandemic, the occupants of public functions can only be held responsible if they “act or omit with intent [intenção] or serious error. “Otherwise, actions in civil and administrative spheres would remain unpunished, but not in criminal matters.
The safe conduct of public agents is questioned by specialists in law and by the political class. In Brasilia, this measure, number 966/2020, has been called the MP of Impunity. Opposition parties to the president have announced that they will file unconstitutional lawsuits with the Federal Supreme Court to try to block the validity of the rules. “I see an attempt to protect oneself during the acts practiced in this pandemic because civil society has strongly demanded it,” says lawyer Guilherme Amorim, director of Uninove’s master in constitutional law. This expert says that the measure may be unconstitutional because it would confront Article 37 of the Federal Constitution, according to which the State is obliged to bear the damages caused by its servers.
As it was written, the MP brings more doubts than certainties. This is what legal operators call legal uncertainty. “It has a dubious wording that allows different interpretations where everything fits, exactly to avoid liability,” said criminal lawyer Miguel Pereira Neto, counselor at the São Paulo Institute of Lawyers. For him, the parliamentarian does not bring news, since it deals with topics that have already been addressed in the Law of Introduction to the Norms of the Brazilian Law, approved in 2018.
Bolsonaro downplayed the impact of the pandemic from the start. I have already said that it was a “little squeeze”, that there was a “hysteria” in the media about her and she described the popular reaction to the disease as “fantasy”. After participating in at least three popular demonstrations against social isolation measures and against the institutions of the Republic, it was only this week that he began to wear a face mask daily, as personal protective equipment. His actions, which go against the guidelines of the World Health Organization, have already produced at least five impeachment requests that accuse him of undermining public health. This Thursday, the country registered 13,993 deaths and 202,918 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
The MP was signed by the president after the Federal Court of Audit, one of the country’s main supervisory bodies, authorized the opening of a full audit on the payment of emergency aid of 600 reais for approximately 60 million Brazilians. There are suspicions of fraud at the destination of this resource. Among those who benefit from this aid are some 190,000 on active duty, reserves and pensioners. The Ministries of Defense and Citizenship have opened internal investigations to determine where this failure occurred.
Malicious pandemic
In an interview with the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, The President of the Federal Court of Accounts, José Múcio Monteiro, affirmed that the measure could generate a “pandemic of malicious”. “I do not want to dispute, but the court has been doing partnership work, maintaining dialogue at this difficult time, and it is our constitutional role to monitor spending control and avoid this stimulus for a malicious pandemic.”
In the political field, the REDE and PSOL parties were the first to resort to the President of the National Congress, Davi Alcolumbre (DEM-AP) to return the MP to the Executive. They also sought the support of the judiciary to block Bolsonaro’s text. In the opinion of the opposition leader in the Senate, Randolfe Rodrigues, the deputy protects irregularity and administrative crime. “The president denies, on the one hand, the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and, on the other, uses the pen and power of the President of the Republic to protect his people.”
In the same vein, he followed the leader of PSOL in the Chamber, Fernanda Melchiona (RS). “Eliminating the responsibility of public agents at a time when even more attention is needed is one way of trying to exempt agents who do not preserve people’s lives from fraud and responsibility, which unfortunately is the case with Bolsonaro” .
Entities, such as the Instituto Não Aceito Corrupção, have joined the choir of opponents to the measure of the president. “Instead of guaranteeing the rights already established by the legal system, the parliamentarian greatly favors impunity,” says a note published by the NGO.
If there is this attempt at confrontation between opponents, there is a division between politicians who consider themselves independent. The vice president of the Senate, Antonio Anastasia (PSDB-MG), praised the deputy and said, in his Twitter profile, that he protects the good manager. “When making the decision, especially in times of acute crisis, there is often no real time or conditions to predict all risks. Still, the decision must be made. ”
The president of the Senate Constitution and Justice Commission, Simone Tebet (MDB-MS), says that she is skeptical about the MP process and that if it is not changed to end the terms of dubious interpretations, she will vote against. “In theory, the measurement appears to be correct. The problem is that the one who signs it is a president who is openly against the correct guidelines of the WHO ”, he says.
The MP has 120 days to be voted by the two Houses of the National Congress. Its legal effect is immediate, it has come into effect since this Thursday the 14th. As an attempt to reconnect with the Legislature, Bolsonaro met with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia (DEM-RJ), whom he criticized intensely in the last weeks.
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