Renato Freitas will assume Racial Equality Commission in PR – 02/25/2023 – Power

Target of an impeachment process when he was still councilor of Curitiba, the current state deputy Renato Freitas (PT) should be confirmed in the coming days for the command of a newly created commission in the Legislative Assembly of Paraná whose focus is racial equality, its main flag in mandate.

Freitas had been impeached for breaking parliamentary decorum, after participating in a demonstration that advanced into the Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos de São Benedito Church, in February last year. They were protesting the murders in Rio de Janeiro of Congolese Moïse Mugenyi Kabagambe and Durval Teófilo Filho, two black men, aged 24 and 38.

The process in the Curitiba Chamber gained national repercussions, with declarations of solidarity even from the priest responsible for the parish. Freitas at the time said that the impeachment was motivated by prejudice and occurred through abuse of authority.

Elected last year with 58,000 votes, he can only assume the seat in the state Legislature backed by an injunction from Minister Luís Roberto Barroso, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), who in September suspended the impeachment.

In an interview with Sheet, Freitas, 39, said that the first step in the commission will be to carry out a survey of how many black, indigenous and gypsy people occupy public positions —between statutory and commissioned ones– in the three Powers. The idea is to target commissioned positions, which, as they are filled via appointment, are not covered by the racial quotas provided for in public tenders.

“We can’t see ourselves in the spaces of power, which is not only a problem of representation, but also a problem of democracy. Because the head thinks where the foot steps. The experiences we have and have had in the history of our country, we , black community, are not valued within the Powers,” he said.

The idea, according to the deputy, is to trigger the Judiciary to point out that, by way of transverse route, there would be a circumvention of the legislation on racial quotas in the public service: “We want the Justice to recognize this phenomenon, which unfortunately is a typically Brazilian phenomenon”.

In the Legislative Assembly, it is the first time that racial equality is the subject of a permanent commission. The House is mostly white – for the Electoral Justice, of the 54 state deputies, only three declare themselves black, including Freitas, and two other politicians declare themselves brown.

“I want to engage not only people here in Paraná, who were perhaps insufficient for us to be able to carry out the actions we intend, but legal entities and personalities from across the country”, said Freitas, citing the possibility of inviting the Minister of Human Rights and of Citizenship, Silvio Almeida, and the Minister of Racial Equality, Anielle Franco, for debates in the Paraná commission.

Before the current legislature, there were 26 permanent thematic collegiate bodies in the House of Paraná. Although they hold commissioned positions, most of them have historically had an opaque performance or only gain body in specific periods – such as the Health Commission during the coronavirus pandemic, for example.

With the start of the current legislature, three more commissions were created —in addition to the Commission for Racial Equality, the Commission for the Defense of the Rights of the Elderly and the Commission for Mines, Energy and Water–, increasing to 29 groups of this type.

Freitas admits that the creation of the commission that he will chair in the next few days is part of the list of conditions placed by the opposition bench –a group of just 8 parliamentarians, among 54— to support the re-election of state deputy Ademar Traiano (PSD) to the main chair of the Home. Traiano is an ally of Governor Ratinho Junior (PSD) and was unanimously elected by his peers at the beginning of the month to preside over the Legislative Assembly for the fifth time.

The congressman says that the issue of public security will be the nerve center of the committee’s work and recalls the proposal for video cameras on the uniforms of military and penal police. “It’s not a radical action. It’s just an inspection to limit the discretionary and subjective power of the public security agent. Common sense brings with it, as a rule, structural racism. And there is an overrepresentation of the black population in the statistics of incarceration and violent deaths. We want to somehow set boundaries,” he said.

Although in Paraná there are already cities where municipal guards use the equipment, the state government is still studying the measure. “We imagine that today, with this warlike, militaristic, ultra-conservative wave, there will be no adherence by the State. It will have to come from civil society and other entities linked to human rights,” he said.