DPU: Lula appoints defender with performance in Vaza Jato – 05/19/2023 – Power

The government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) appointed this Friday (19) public defender Igor Roberto Albuquerque Roque to head the DPU (Union Public Defender).

Roque has acted in the defense of Danilo Marques, one of the prisoners in Operation Spoofing, better known as Vaza Jato.

In the case, from 2019, hackers revealed messages from Lava Jato prosecutors and then federal judge Sergio Moro. The episode gained notoriety and led to lawsuits, on suspicion of authorities acting in Lava Jato.

The nomination of the defender of the Federal District comes amid criticism of the category’s delay and was published in the Official Gazette this Friday, by message to the Senate. Parliamentarians need to endorse Roque’s name.

Former president of Anadef (National Association of Federal Public Defenders and Defenders), Roque ranked second on the triple list, but had the support of the Prerogativas group, formed by lawyers sympathetic to the Lula (PT) government.

At the end of last year, the team of the then-elected government managed to block the questioning of the former federal general public defender, Daniel Macedo, reappointed to the position for another two years by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The nomination was officially withdrawn on January 31 and, since then, the DPU (Defensoria Pública da União) has been on hold, while the government tries to shield itself from possible Bolsonarists.

Macedo received 507 votes and ranked first in the triple list drawn up by career members. Ex-president of Anadef came in second, with 290 votes; and Leonardo Magalhães in third, with 277.

At the beginning of the month, the Sheet showed that public defenders of the Union pointed to President Lula’s disregard for his career and complained about the interruption in the body’s long-term planning.

Members of the career affirmed, with reservation, that the situation of delay in the choice would be even more revolting because the agenda of the DPU coincides with that of the Lula government, and resort to a speech by the president to say that “including the poor in the budget” is also give him free legal advice.

Complaints increased after the government reportedly canceled at least six meetings on the proposed fiscal framework.

Union public defenders had been trying to draw the attention of the Ministry of Finance to a 2014 constitutional amendment providing for the internalization of the Public Defender’s Office until last year. Today, less than 30% of the territory has the agency’s presence.

The president of Anadef, Eduardo Kassuga, stated at the time that the DPU was experiencing a kind of “standard operation”. He said that the interim ones end up paralyzed because they cannot run the risk of drawing up an action plan that is later incompatible with the one chosen by Lula.

“[Estamos] with normal assistance, except that the absence of the general public defender completely undermines the definition of a national action, itinerant plans and institutional missions related to traditional communities, quilombolas, indigenous people, riverside communities, migrants and refugees”, he says.