The Federal Supreme Court will turn 130 next week. It was only the Federal Constitution of 1891 that instituted it. The first Magna Carta conceived under the republican regime, fifteen months after the end of the monarchy was promulgated on February 24 of that year. The inaugural session of the Court took place four days later, on February 28. Over these 130 years, the STF has never been closed. The attacks on him, however, were many. The most successful culminated in the forced retirement of three ministers, followed by the resignation of two others, in the first days of 1969. “Hermes Lima, Victor Nunes Leal, and Evandro Lins e Silva were considered to be left by the military”, These were dark times, even more, foggy since the edition of Institutional Act number 5, popularly known as AI-5, on December 13th of the previous year.
Instruments through which the Executive Branch was able to legislate, stealing from Parliament the prerogative of the function, institutional acts served the purposes of the supreme ruler of the land in a trance. With an aggravating factor, unlike decrees, widely used today, institutional acts were above all legislation and also the Federal Constitution. Between April 1964 and December 1969, 17 institutional acts were enacted. The number is suggestive. Were edited as a form of The most despotic of these institutional acts was the fifth, formulated by the then Minister of Justice Gama e Silva and decreed by General President Arthur da Costa e Silva with a total of 17 signatures.
The number, again, is suggestive. In addition to the presidential autograph, the document carried the signatures of sixteen ministers of state. Delfim Netto, Mario Andreazza, Jarbas Passarinho, and other leaders of the increasingly shamed dictatorship, including the heads of Health, Leonel Miranda, and Education and Culture, Tarso Dutra. No women, no blacks, and, it is worth noting, proportionally more civilians than there are today in the first echelon of the government In a pen, the AI-5 conferred full powers on the President of the Republic and distributed swipes everywhere.
Right away, it allowed the president to decree a parliamentary recess, which was done that same afternoon through Complementary Act number 38. Congress closed, the cassations started. Considering only parliamentarians, eleven federal deputies were suspended at first, on December 30, and another thirty-five on January 19, as well as two senators on this second date. Until the end of the parliamentary recess, which lasted for ten months, the number of cassations exceeded eighty, adding the casualties in the two Houses. The AI-5 still could authorize the president.
This historical perspective is timely for several reasons. Among them, remind the reader, especially the younger ones, that it was the military regime that instrumentalized the STF, in a broad and unrestricted way, changing rules and shamelessly intervening in the functioning of another power, from which independence should have been preserved. The result was the Supreme Court’s almost complete starvation at that time. With the paradox of having contributed to legitimizing the official thesis that the institutions functioned regularly, within democratic rules. The main reason for evoking in this column the abuses instituted by AI-5, however, is to observe how much its trivialization.
The main reason for evoking in this column the abuses instituted by AI-5, however, is to observe how much its trivialization is closely related to the recent escalation of offenses and threats against the Supreme Court and its ministers. Allowing or authorizing the apology for AI-5 has a high cost for institutions and for democracy itself – and about this, the STF can and should be charged. When the ministers of the Supreme Federal Court decide, by seven votes to two, to end any discussion on the revision of the amnesty law, as occurred in 2010, such a decision is equivalent to conferring the constitutional seal on the amnesty of torturers and murderers, keeping them safe from judgment, penalty or.
When the STF ministers understand that a federal deputy does not violate the Constitution by paying homage to torturer Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, “the terror of Dilma Rousseff”, in front of the crowded plenary, nor when he repeats phrases such as “the dictatorship’s mistake was to torture and not killing “or” I am in favor of torture, you know “, contribute to the trivialization of torture, murder and, above all, this type of discourse, clearly an attempt against democracy and human rights. It is as if they said: “Let him speak, he has the right to express himself, well balls”. The danger lies in the message that this type of discourse transmits to sectors of society. Sounds like a safe conduit, a version.
