Opposition rushes to install January 8 CPMI

Opposition parliamentarians are waiting for the first joint session of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, to be scheduled by Senator Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), president of Congress, to demand the reading of the request and the immediate installation of the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry ( CPMI) dedicated to investigating details of the vandalism of January 8 in Brasilia and possible omissions by the federal government.

They argue that the common regiment of Congress requires such a procedure, if there are enough signatures, of at least one third of the senators and another third of the deputies, numbers reached last Friday night (24).

Altogether, there are 33 supporters of senators, compared to the 27 needed. 189 came from the Chamber, more than the minimum required of 171. On Monday night (27), the request for opening the CPMI was filed.

The proposal presented by Deputy André Fernandes (PL-CE) provides for the identification of perpetrators of depredations in the headquarters of the Three Powers of the Republic and also the investigation of possible omission by federal authorities in the face of alerts received.

Senator Marcos do Val (Podemos-ES) is a candidate to be the rapporteur of the CPMI and warns that, if the commission is installed, it will ask for the breach of confidentiality of documents and videos that would prove the alleged illegality practiced by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino.

Pacheco has to explain to the STF why he did not install the CPI in the Senate

In parallel, Senator Soraya Thronicke (União Brasil-MS) wants the immediate installation of the CPI in the Senate, which she proposed on the very day of the acts, in the previous legislature.

With the current endorsement of 39 senators in office, she entered the Federal Supreme Court (STF) on the last day 16 with a writ of mandamus to force Pacheco to authorize the work. Rapporteur of the measure at the Supreme Court, Minister Gilmar Mendes gave Pacheco a period of 10 days to comment on the installation of this CPI.

In addition to citing having obtained a sufficient number of signatures from senators in the current legislature, added to 12 without a mandate, Soraya defends in the lawsuit that the fact that the proposal was made in the past legislature cannot be considered an impediment to the installation.

If the STF orders the opening of the CPI, the leader of the government in the Senate, Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES), should ask for the withdrawal of signatures from government supporters, on the grounds that the Judiciary is already investigating the fact.

Unlike the CPI of the Senate, the request of the CPMI, which is made up of senators and deputies, did not have the support of parliamentarians from the government base in the Chamber, following the Executive’s guidance.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has already made it clear that he does not want either of the two collegiate bodies. The official discourse is that there is a fear that the CPI or the CPMI could disrupt the approval of projects proposed by the economic area, which are priorities for the PT.

Governors changed sides in less than a month

According to senators interviewed by the People’s Gazetteit is also known that the government is afraid of providing ammunition to the opposition, especially regarding the information published in the press that the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) had notified government bodies, 48 ​​hours before the invasion, about the gravity of planned acts.

With that, the mood in relation to an opening of the CPI was radically reversed in Congress in less than a month after the fact, when the first reaction of the government supporters was to support a parliamentary investigation to target former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Support achieved is celebrated by the opposition

Senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) celebrated the minimal support obtained to make the CPMI viable, which he considers the “ideal forum to clarify the deplorable vandalism that occurred in Praça dos Três Poderes, as well as its consequences that are far from republican, without following due process legal”, in a reference to the more than 900 detained for almost two months in the Papuda (men) and Colmeia (women) prisons, in Brasília. He claims that there are innocent people detained, as they would have arrived in the federal capital after the acts.

For him, the prior knowledge of the Ministry of Justice and more than 40 federal agencies about the purpose of the demonstration needs to be detailed. “Even the National Security Force and the presidential guard have been demobilized. This strange story needs to be evaluated and the whole truth found out, ”he underlined.

In this sense, this week a request for a CPI, authored by Deputy Evair de Melo (PL-ES), also began to be processed in the Chamber, to exclusively investigate the alleged responsibilities of Minister Flávio Dino, due to his awareness of risks that were confirmed on January 8, 2023, at Esplanada dos Ministérios and Praça dos Três Poderes, in Brasília.

Government supporters fear that this request, if successful, could disrupt the CPMI request, which has a temporal prevalence and greater focus.