Lula’s lawyer is confirmed by the Senate as minister of the STF

Lawyer for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and one of the executioners of Lava Jato, Cristiano Zanin was confirmed by the plenary of the Senate, in the session this Wednesday (21), as the new minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), by 58 votes in favor and 18 against.

After almost 8 hours of the Sabbath at the Senate Constitution and Justice Commission (CCJ), the vote in the plenary of the Legislative House was quick and lasted about 35 minutes.

Before the vote, Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) spoke out against the nomination for the STF, which ended up going through an elastic scoreboard. For the former Lava Jato judge, the appointment of Zanin, for having been Lula’s lawyer, is a “risk to the independence” of the Court.

Over the last few weeks, the People’s Gazette consulted analysts and politicians who highlighted as a wave in favor of Zanin, despite eventual resistance from the opposition and even from the most left wing of the government, the fact that the lawyer had a guarantor profile. The prospect of keeping in Ricardo Lewandowski’s vacancy another judge opposed to alleged excesses of Justice against powerful figures encouraged government and even opposition senators.

To complete this state of mind, Zanin managed to build bridges with the most conservative sectors of the Senate, represented by members of the Evangelical Front in Congress, during his tour of personal presentation to most senators, in visits to offices and dinners. Explicit negatives were replaced by votes of confidence or just silence about how he would vote.

Questions such as the recurrent invasion by the Judiciary over the powers of the Legislative, including topics such as abortion and drug use, in addition to the timeframe for the demarcation of indigenous lands, were answered by Zanin with generic statements. He only stressed respect for the Constitution, defense of the prerogative of Congress to legislate and the guarantor profile. He also did not guarantee that he will declare himself prevented from judging Lava Jato cases or any cases against Lula that may reach the STF in the future.

“In the recent past, almost everything that worked in specialized criminal courts often received the Lava Jato label. This is not for me a criterion for legal control, but one that the law provides for, which is to analyze the parties and the content”, he told senator Sergio Moro during the sabbath. “Once a hypothesis of impediment and suspicion is identified, I will not have the slightest problem in declaring the impediment or suspicion and not participating in the trial”.

The opportunity of the sabbatine to explore the contradictions of the nominee, pointed out with great emphasis on Zanin’s potential suspicion in relation to processes of interest to President Lula, in the first place, and on the supposed lack of legal knowledge, in the background, boiled down to demonstrations that mixed conformism with reflections on the risks of “disappointment” and appeals to concord.

Zanin’s approval was accelerated in the Senate

The entire process that led Lula’s lawyer to join the STF took just 20 days, a record period since the publication of the official nomination in the Official Gazette, on June 1st. The speed imposed by the government leaders and guaranteed by the also allied presidents of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), and of the CCJ, Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil-AP), aimed at diluting any pressures even from the government base.

In the end, the rapporteur for Lula’s nomination in the Senate, Veneziano Vital do Rêgo (MDB-PB), and also opposition senators agreed to corroborate the thesis that Zanin fulfilled the requirements of age, reputation and legal knowledge, in addition to private competence of the President of the Republic in making the nomination. They also recognized the need to discuss the model for appointing ministers to the STF, a source of controversy.