Supreme Court justice rejects PSB's and PSBD's motions against Lula appointment

Supreme Court (STF) Justice Teori Zavascki rejected Monday (Apr. 4) the motions filed by PSB and PSDB parties against the president's decree appointing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as chief-of-staff. To his understanding, actions against the violation of a constitutional fundamental right, known in Portuguese as ADPFs, do not apply in the arguments presented.

The justice argues a citizen suit or a public interest civil action could be lodged instead. “What is made clear after all these considerations is that, as a solution to the legal problem outlined in the ADPF, more than one alternate mechanism to reach the court was available which was capable to produce an advantageous response—effective and immediate,” Zavascki says in his ruling.

He notes that the writ of mandamus was used by both the PPS and the PSBD to question Lula's nomination, and that it was in Justice Gilmar Mendes's provisional ruling on this appeal that Justice Gilmar Mendes invalidated Lula's appointment on March 18, so Gilmar's decision is still in effect, despite Zavascki's decision—and Lula's cabinet post remains suspended.

Zavascki further highlights that, in the two motions turned down today, the parties maintain that, by nominating the former president as minister after the release of “related accounts linking [Lula's] name to wrongdoing for which he was being investigated by the Federal Court in Curitiba, the president was allegedly attempting to grant him privileged forum, arbitrarily transferring the jurisdiction investigating him.” The political parties also ask for “the jurisdiction of the natural judge in the case in question [to be] preserved,” i.e., Federal Judge Sérgio Moro's.

In the text of his ruling, the minster also describes that the target of the two motions as “an isolated uncommon and unprecedented act by the presidency, whereby former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was named so as to  occupy a cabinet position. No analogous case has been known, nor has the probability of its recurrence outside of theory.”

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira