Defender hangs in the Senate after being associated with abortion – 10/19/2023 – Power

A seminar on legal abortion that would be organized by the DPU (Union Public Defender’s Office) deepened the wear and tear in the Senate with the appointment of President Lula (PT) to head the body, which has been blocked for more than three months.

Igor Roque was examined and approved by the Senate’s CCJ (Constitution and Justice Committee) in July for the position of federal public defender, but since then, the vote in the House’s plenary has been postponed due to the risk of defeat.

The paralysis in command of the DPU began in November last year, when Jair Bolsonaro (PL) nominated the then general public defender Daniel Macedo — who is evangelical — for reappointment. Viewed by the current command of the Palácio do Planalto as a Bolsonarista, Macedo had his nomination withdrawn and was replaced by Roque in May.

Roque was not questioned about abortion by any senator during the three-hour hearing at the CCJ, but he has been associated by Bolsonarian parliamentarians with the organization of the seminar at the DPU on access to legal abortion, which would take place at the end of August.

Faced with complaints from politicians, the institution decided to cancel the seminar “to resume the discussion at a future event, to be organized with the presence of experts with antagonistic views on the topic, making the debate more plural.”

Privately, allies of Lula’s nominee claim that the movement to try to harm him is also being sponsored by conservative public defenders, who fear that measures adopted by the last administration will be reviewed.

On the other hand, the cancellation of the seminar ended up causing internal wear and tear for Roque from a more progressive wing of the institution — which supported his designation.

The panel would feature the participation of researcher from the Bioethics Institute Anis Gabriela Rondon and gynecologist Helena Paro, professor at UFU (Federal University of Uberlândia) and responsible for the first telemedicine abortion service in the country.

On the eve of the scheduled date for the event, senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) even stood on the Senate floor to say that the DPU was “apology for the crime of abortion” — even though pregnancy termination is authorized in Brazil in cases of rape, risk to the woman’s life and fetal anencephaly.

The Federal Public Defender’s Office states that the seminar had been organized since April by the Women’s Working Group (1 of the 16 in operation), without any participation by Roque or the acting public defender, Fernando Mauro Junior.

The assessment of grassroots parliamentarians is that the opposition is also trying to use the episode involving the DPU to send a message to the government and the STF (Supreme Federal Court) about the advancement of progressive agendas.

After the then minister Rosa Weber, of the STF, voted in favor of the decriminalization of abortion up to 12 weeks of gestation, the Senate toughened its criticism of the Supreme Court and reacted to topics that had already been discussed by the court, such as the time frame for indigenous lands .

The discussion on abortion ended up being paralyzed by the President of the Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, who has no plans to resume the trial and says that the topic “needs more debate in society”.

Public defender in Maranhão and vice-president of the Association of Women Public Defenders of Brazil, Clarice Binda regrets that the panel on abortion was canceled and, furthermore, contaminated the appointment of the head of the Public Defender’s Office.

“This contamination should not exist. The DPU is an autonomous, independent institution. And the Defender’s Office’s agenda is the defense of vulnerable groups. There should not be this interference from other Powers in the institutional function of the Defender’s Office”, he states.

“In the specific case of legal abortion, it is women who often seek out the Ombudsman’s Office to ensure this right. When we don’t discuss this, it is a huge institutional loss. We lose a lot in terms of the quality of the service provided by the defenders.”

After the cancellation, the entity released a note criticizing the act as abrupt and prior censorship, in addition to institutional gender violence.

It was, said the association, a “violation and disrespect for the functional performance of federal public defenders in the exercise of their final activities and curtailing the decision-making power of women with a clear command to maintain a patriarchal order.”

Given the increase in resistance to Roque, the government’s strategy should be to try to vote on his name on the same day as Lula’s three nominees to the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) — when the vast majority of senators participate in the session to record that they voted in favor of the new ministers.

This Wednesday (18), the president of the CCJ, Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil-AP), scheduled the hearing of the STJ nominees for next Wednesday (25).

To try to gain time in the vote and avoid a defeat, the government leader in the Senate, Jaques Wagner (PT-BA), raised a doubt in August about the number of votes needed to approve the Federal Public Defender General of the Union.

Both the law that organizes the Union’s Public Defender’s Office and the Senate’s internal regulations say that the nominee must be approved by a qualified majority (41 of 81 votes). The Constitution, on the other hand, provides for a simple majority (half of those present plus one).

The question has been at a standstill at the CCJ for three months, but the government itself is working with the scenario of needing 41 votes.

The vote on STJ nominees does not yet have a date. As shown by Sheetsenators have held back approval to try to participate in choosing the appointment of Augusto Aras’s successor in the Attorney General’s Office.