AGU corrects itself and includes women in pro-democracy body – 01/23/2023 – Panel

The AGU (Attorney General of the Union) had to correct in an extra edition of the Official Gazette the ordinance in which it instituted the GT (Working Group) that will help regulate the National Attorney of the Union for the Defense of Democracy.

On Friday (20), the original text stipulated the participation of 11 civil society bodies and entities, such as the National Association of Journalists and the National Council of Justice, for example. Next, it listed 12 professors representing the academic and scientific community, all men.

The ordinance also did not provide for the participation of representatives of content platforms and messaging services.

On the same Friday, after the criticisms, the AGU published a new ordinance, excluding the names of representatives of the academic community and increasing the number of participating institutions to 27. For example, InternetLab and Coalition Rights on the Network were included.

The new wording also included an article recommending that institutions observe gender parity, “except in cases of duly substantiated circumstantial impossibility”.

For congresswoman Adriana Ventura (Novo-SP), member of the Digital Parliamentary Front and professor at FGV-SP, “the government starts with the left foot”. “In addition to the body’s competence being at least debatable, it forgot to bring women into the debate and seems to want to serve journalists’ associations while completely jettisoning the digital world”, she criticizes.

Members of the AGU claim that there was a slip in publishing the ordinance with only men. At the time of publication there were already confirmed women, but the names were not included.

The note published on the ministry’s website already included professors María Mercedes Iglesias Bárez, from the University of Salamanca (Spain), Carolina Maria Horta Gaviria, from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Colombia) and Bruna Martins dos Santos, a researcher at the Center for Social Sciences in Berlin (WZB), for example.

Regarding digital content platforms, there is an expectation that they will be invited to participate, but it is not yet clear when this could happen.

The Minister of AGU, Jorge Messias, announced the creation of the procuratorate in his inauguration speech, on January 2nd. On the occasion, he explained that the structure “will contribute to the efforts of defensive democracy and promote a prompt response to disinformation measures and attacks on the effectiveness of public policies.”

“This office will also function as the spearhead of an inter-institutional action that will promote the Brazilian strategy for the defense of democracy, with the founding of the National System for the Protection of Democracy”, he said.

The announcement and the lack of details on how the structure will act created apprehensions about what the new Public Prosecutor’s Office could treat as disinformation. Complaints came mainly from opposition parliamentarians.

Internally, in the face of criticism that the new Attorney’s Office could have an authoritarian bias, the AGU has said that it has no police power.

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.