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BRASÍLIA —A decision made by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) on Tuesday will allow candidates under the Clean Registry Law who cannot run in the October 4 municipal elections to stand in the November 15 elections. With the polls postponed, the ineligibility period for those who could not appear at the polls in October will already have expired the following month. The elections were postponed this year by constitutional amendment due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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The decision was made in a consultation proposal with the TSE, deputy Célio Studart (PV-CE). He questioned whether candidates with dirty records deemed ineligible for the 2020 elections, according to the original schedule, are still prohibited from running for public office, even with the elections postponed to November. The answer was no. The score was five votes to two.
An understanding of the TSE should imply an increase in the number of candidates for mayor and councilor who can run this year. The decision of the ministers followed the opinion of the court’s technical adviser, according to which the postponement of the elections cannot prevent the candidacy of politicians framed in the Clean File Law until October of this year.
The Clean Acts Law establishes that those convicted by a second instance court must be ineligible for a period of eight years from the crime committed. Therefore, those convicted of illegalities in the 2012 elections would be excluded from the polls until October of this year.
– I’d say luck is luck. In the case here, of some possible candidates who would be ineligible, the change of the electoral date did not depend on them – said Minister Alexandre de Moraes.
According to Moraes, the Clean Registry Law is a very important law, which protects morality, but it has its limitations.
– It is a restriction of a fundamental right, the full exercise of political rights. If this restriction ends on the same day of the following eighth year, and the election has changed, I understand that, unless expressly mentioned that it could have come from the constitutional reform, we cannot interpret it in a broad way, to extend this restriction – concluded the minister.
Mauro Campbell, Tarcísio Vieira, Sérgio Banhos and the president of the TSE, Luís Roberto Barroso, voted in the same direction.
– Ineligibility is counted day by day. If some are lucky, others were unlucky at other times – declared Banhos.
– The electoral process has already begun, it would be difficult for me to change this state of affairs, although I do not think it is the best. In certain cases, the ideal of justice must yield to legal certainty, and I think we are facing one of these cases – reflected Barroso.
Ministers Edson Fachin and Luís Felipe Salomão voted to extend the ineligibility of politicians until November. They agreed with the opinion of the deputy electoral attorney general, Renato Brill de Góes, who defended the broader interpretation of the law. For the prosecutor, the ineligibility should be extended until December 31, because each year the election falls on a different day, and a literal interpretation of the term could lead to a casuistry.
– The eight-year term has as its final term the end of the year, December 31, which is a fixed date, and not variable, which will bring casuistry, as it is bringing it this year – said the prosecutor before the vote.
