Committee president: granting amnesty to Bolsonaro supporters is a distortion – 03/07/2024 – Panel

President of the Amnesty Commission, Eneá de Stutz e Almeida criticizes the attempt by Bolsonarists who invaded buildings in Planalto, Congress and STF (Supreme Federal Court) on January 8th to use the speech that they suffer political persecution from the Lula (PT) government.

“Political persecution is when you are resisting an exceptional regime, because you are fighting for democracy”, says Almeida, who is also a professor at the Faculty of Law at UnB (University of Brasília).

“What they were asking for was exactly the opposite. They were asking for the closure of the Federal Supreme Court, the closure of Congress, non-recognition of official institutions, such as the Electoral Court, the TSE (Superior Electoral Court).”

In her assessment, it is an “absolutely distorted” argument, like that used by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) himself, that the State of Siege is an instrument provided for in the Constitution. “What we wanted was not to meet certain premises that are constitutional, it was to contest the results of the elections”, he continues. “So this is not called for by democracy. This is called for by dictatorship.”

“So, this justification of political persecution is not applicable, because democracy cannot admit the abolition of democracy itself”, he highlights. “The limit is exactly respect for the Democratic Rule of Law, which is everything these people were rebelling against.”

For Almeida, when evaluating whether the actions were heroic resistance or the commission of a crime, the Judiciary will have no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that they were the second case. “Because what was called for was institutional rupture. This is not political persecution, it is simply law enforcement.”

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