STF interrupts trial of the State-owned Law after Mendonça’s request for review – 03/11/2023 – Market

Minister André Mendonça, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), asked for a view (more time to analyze), this Saturday (11), of the action proposed by the PC do B against bans on politicians in charge of public companies.

The trial had started on Friday (10), in a virtual plenary session, and would end on the 17th. With Mendonça’s request for more time to study the subject, there is no new date for the verdict.

The only vote published since the beginning of the virtual session was that of the rapporteur, Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.

He partially upheld the action and voted for the unconstitutionality of the veto of appointments of ministers, secretaries, office holders, without permanent link with the public service, of a special nature or of direction and superior advice in public administration.

“I think that indiscriminately removing people who work in public life, whether in the governmental structure, whether in the party or electoral sphere, from the management of state-owned companies, constitutes hateful and unjustifiable discrimination from the point of view of this core principle of our Magna Carta”, he says. Lewandowkski in your vote.

The action was a way for the PC do B to try to overturn devices that restrict appointments, for state-owned companies, of directors and directors who hold public office or who have acted, in the previous three years, in the structure of political parties or in electoral campaigns. .

The action in the STF is seen as one of the alternatives of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government to open the way for the appointment of politicians to positions in public companies.

Such as Sheet showed, members of the government defend that the current rules are premised on the criminalization of politics, having been born in response to Lava Jato. Governance specialists, on the other hand, say that weakening the norm can make the fight against corruption more difficult.

In a demonstration prior to the trial, the Lula government disregarded arguments from the PGFN (Attorney General of the National Treasury) in favor of the State-Owned Companies Law and sent a critical statement to the Supreme Court.

In a technical note, the PGFM stated that the prohibitions provided for in the law are “legally legitimate, reasonable and proportionate” and aim to avoid conflicts of interest, in addition to preventing “partisan or classist interests of the holder of the position of administrator from prevailing over the interest public”.

She also says that vetoes to nominations “show situations, in abstract, of effective conflict of interest (in relation to the person appointed as administrator of a state-owned business company with its corresponding controlling political entity or even its public representatives) that were, from the outset identified and prohibited by the legislator.”

On the other hand, the AGU (Advocacy-General of the Union) argued to the STF that Brazil has institutions capable of controlling and preventing irregularities, such as the TCU (Tribunal de Contas da União), and of investigating and punishing those who committed them, such as the Federal Police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Judiciary.

According to the message, the anticipated fear that any individual who falls under the prohibitions “will act in an improper manner and outside the expected ethical-functional standard” treats political activities as transgressors and sanctions in advance those who carry them out “with prohibitions and limitations to the exercise of rights that should be equally guaranteed to all”.

“On the contrary, party-political activity should be encouraged for all citizens and valued by the constituted Powers, because only through it can effective participation of the people in public matters be achieved, which is the basis of democracy”, he states.