Lula meets with Lewandowski and raises expectations of invitation to the Ministry of Justice – 01/08/2024 – Power

President Lula (PT) invited the retired minister of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) Ricardo Lewandowski to a meeting this Monday morning (8), fueling, among PT’s allies, the expectation that he will be chosen to succeed Flávio Dino at the Ministry of Justice.

According to Lula’s allies, the president intends to decide on the new president this week. The expectation of members of Palácio do Palácio is that Dino’s successor will be announced by this Tuesday (9).

Lewandowski arrived in Brasília on Sunday night (7) to participate in the ceremony in memory of January 8, when, a year ago, supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) invaded and vandalized the headquarters of the Three Powers.

The name of the former Supreme Court minister has always been among the favorites for the Ministry of Justice, especially after Lula gave up on the idea of ​​nominating a woman for the position.

According to friends, his family had been offering resistance, since the retired minister is now dedicated to the private sector.

However, they admit that the former minister would hardly refuse an invitation from Lula, with whom he is a friend.

At the end of December, the government leader in the Senate, Jaques Wagner, even ruled out the name of the former STF minister for the role.

The senator signaled that the president had not yet decided who he would choose, but said he knew who would not be minister: Lewandowski, the president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, as well as himself.

“I can tell anyone I know that it won’t be [ministro]: neither Lewandowski, nor Jaques Wagner, nor Gleisi”, said the senator, hours after the Senate endorsed Dino’s choice for the STF.

The statement caused people close to the president to start betting on Wellington, who has the support of Wagner. According to them, Lula gave up on the original idea of ​​appointing a woman to the Ministry of Justice and has floated the possibility of opting for a homemade solution to replace Dino.

Lula’s allies claim that the president has repeated that he will not give up on having a name he trusts at the helm of justice.

Members of the Palace have highlighted Lewandowski’s profile as a man with the technical and political stature to take on the task.

The succession of the Ministry of Justice has always been treated as a difficult issue by those around the president. Since when he was still pondering which name to nominate for Rosa Weber’s vacancy in the STF (Supreme Federal Court).

One of the obstacles to nominating Flávio Dino would be precisely the difficulty of finding a strong name for the department, said allies. Still, Lula appointed the minister to the STF at the end of November.

Publicly, the president has chosen to remain silent and discussed the issue with allies under discretion. The dispute became even more fierce after the approval of Dino’s name in Congress and, days later, the president said in his weekly live broadcast that the minister would remain in charge of the department until this Monday’s act.

“He will remain as minister until the 8th [de janeiro]because we are inviting an event to remember the coup attempt on January 8th”, he stated, without going into details about the succession.

Other names were also mentioned to head the ministry, such as executive secretary Ricardo Cappelli, lawyer Marco Aurélio de Carvalho, and the deputy head of legal affairs for the Presidency, Wellington César Lima e Silva.

The PSB, party of Dino and vice-president Geraldo Alckmin, seeks to maintain secretariats in the portfolio or even the creation of the Ministry of Public Security, under the command of a party nominee (the strongest name, in this case, would be Capelli) .

Coordinator of Prerogativas, Marco Aurélio Carvalho said that, if an invitation to Lewandowski is confirmed, he will have the support of the group. Carvalho says that the former STF minister meets all the conditions to take on the role.