José Frejat, former federal deputy for Rio and father of singer Frejat, dies at the age of 102

Lawyer and former federal deputy for Rio de Janeiro José Frejat died this Saturday (25), aged 102. The information was confirmed by the family. He was the father of singer-songwriter Frejat and Mauro Frejat, and brother of doctor and former deputy Jofran Frejat, who died in 2020. The cause of death was not reported.

Born in March 1924, in Curupuru, Maranhão, he moved to Rio de Janeiro at a young age, where he studied at Colégio Pedro II. In 1947, he entered the National Faculty of Law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). During his undergraduate studies, he played a prominent role in the student movement: he was class representative, second secretary and, in 1949, president of the Cândido de Oliveira Academic Center.

The following year, he assumed the presidency of the National Union of Students (UNE), on an extraordinary basis, after the resignation of Rogê Ferreira, also accumulating the leadership of the Central Directory of Students at UFRJ.

After graduating, in the early 1950s, he was one of the founders and general secretary of the Brazilian Nationalist Movement. In 1958, he served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper O Semanário, which was extinguished after the 1964 military coup.

Frejat built his political trajectory linked to the democratic field. Affiliated with the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), he opposed the military regime and, throughout his career, held the positions of prosecutor of the National Treasury, councilor of Rio de Janeiro and federal deputy. He was elected to the Chamber in 1978 and re-elected in 1982, in the context of the end of bipartisanship.

During the redemocratization process, he voted in favor of the Dante de Oliveira Amendment, which defended direct elections for the Presidency, and supported the election of Tancredo Neves in the Electoral College, in 1985. Throughout his political life, he also had stints with parties such as PSB, PDT and PSDB.

In 1986, he ran for the Senate on Marcelo Alencar’s ticket, but was not elected. Decades later, in 2018, he tried to return to public life as a candidate for state deputy for Rio de Janeiro through Rede Sustentabilidade, but had his candidacy rejected by the Electoral Court.