House members impeach one of their own, endorsing electoral court ruling

Brazil’s lower house on Tuesday complied with a Superior Electoral Court decision that impeached Congressman Deltan Dallagnol, a former Car Wash prosecutor.

Mr. Dallagnol was impeached on May 16 in a unanimous but highly controversial ruling. 

Brazilian legislation establishes that former prosecutors who resigned while facing disciplinary proceedings must be declared unfit to run for office for eight years. But when Mr. Dallagnol resigned in late 2021, there were no such proceedings pending against him. 

One of the parties that requested Mr. Dallagnol’s impeachment actually argued that there was a “high probability” that a number of complaints against him would become formal disciplinary proceedings in the future.

Electoral Justice Benedito Gonçalves, the court’s ombudsman, argued that pending complaints regarding Mr. Dallagnol’s behavior could eventually result in his dismissal from his job as prosecutor. Previously, the lower electoral court in the southern state of Paraná had rejected the impeachment request and greenlit Mr. Dallagnol’s candidacy.

However, Horacio Neiva, who holds a Ph.D. in Brazilian legal theory from the University of São Paulo, wrote that the law is objective — and that the fact that Mr. Dallagnol was not facing disciplinary proceedings puts him beyond the reach of ineligibility laws.

What’s more, the same court’s precedents establish that ineligibility interpretations must be “narrow” because the ability to run for public office is a “fundamental right.”

A coalition that includes the ruling Workers’ Party also requested Mr. Dallagnol’s impeachment. The party is a virulent critic of Operation Car Wash since its star member, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was jailed for 580 days after being sentenced as part of the anti-graft investigation. 

His convictions were later quashed on procedural grounds and the Supreme Court found that the judge on the case was biased against the now-president.

Mr. Dallagnol was the best-voted congressperson in his home state of Paraná in 2022, with over 344,000 votes. Supporters held demonstrations in a few Brazilian cities in a campaign for the House’s board not to comply with the Electoral Court’s decision.

In a televised interview last week, Mr. Dallagnol said that the court “created” a criteria not defined by law in order to impeach him. He pledged to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Dallagnol also said that the Lula administration has intensified a vindictive agenda against Operation Car Wash and its former members. 

In March, President Lula said that, while in jail, he wanted to “fuck over” former judge and now-Senator Sergio Moro, and that he intended to seek revenge. “It will only be O.K. once I’ve fucked over [Mr.] Moro,” Lula declared.

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