Bolsonaro allies seek STF ministers to deal with amnesty after conviction

The day after Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for the Federal Supreme Court, PL leaders and allies near the former president opened a parallel front of political articulation. In addition to the effort in Congress to approve an amnesty proposal, they began to probe ministers of the Court in search of signs of receptivity to a possible law that could benefit both Bolsonaro and those convicted of the acts of January 8, 2023.

The movement is led by the president of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, Senator Rogério Marinho (PL-RN) and Deputy Sostenes Cavalcante (PL-RJ), leader of the party bench in the House. Still on Thursday night, during a vigil in front of the condominium where Bolsonaro fulfills house arrest, Sostenes declared:

– It has the question of constitutionality. The eleven STF ministers will have to speak up. We will need six votes there. And this work has already begun to be done. Many people are working and I am one of them.

In the group, the assessment is that it is not enough to achieve votes in the legislature: without some prior understanding with the Supreme, the amnesty runs a high risk of being considered unconstitutional and overthrown soon after approval.

The former president was convicted yesterday by the first class of the STF, made up of five ministers, four voted for the conviction. In court, there are six other magistrates who did not participate in the trial, and they are the opposition aims.

Among the ministers already sought are Luiz Fux, a divergent vote at the trial, and those who did not participate in the decision: André Mendonça and Kassio Nunes Marques, nominated by Bolsonaro, and Gilmar Mendes, who has been probed since precautionary measures were applied to the former president. The strategy also includes attempt to approach the president of the Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, seen as key figure to measure the internal arrangement of the court. However, Barroso’s speech yesterday, when he said that the trial was completed ended a “backward cycle” in the country, cooled the allied plans.

There is no expectation of dialogue with Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the action that led to the conviction, nor with ministers such as Flávio Dino and Cármen Lúcia, who made votes considered harder. The president of the first class, Cristiano Zanin, has not yet been sought, but, because he has a Christian and more conservative profile, can be sought in the coming days.

This type of probing is not unprecedented. Two weeks before the decision against Bolsonaro, the governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas (Republicans), also sought ministers to discuss the amnesty hypothesis. At the time, the governor did not get positive signs.

The predominant assessment between magistrates is that a broad and unrestricted amnesty, which reaches Bolsonaro and all convicted of the coup attempt, would hardly resist constitutional sieve. For STF members, such a proposal would be overthrown, even if sectors of Congress insist on advancing on the agenda.

Opposition conversations are presented by articulators as an institutional reaction, but ministers listened to the movement as political pressure, triggered in record time after the trial. For them, the offensive will hardly succeed.

In Congress, the articulation aims at the choice of a favorable rapporteur and the construction of majority to approve the project. The mayor, Hugo Motta, has not given signs that the proposal will be based, even under pressure from Bolsonaro interlocutors.

Centrão leaders have already pondered the possibility of approving a text that does not include the former president, an alternative accepted by a less harsh wing from the PL. Bolsonaro’s surroundings, however, insists that he will not give votes to this project.

Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison in the so -called plot of the coup and remains in house arrest until the case is final.