Priscilla Mazenotti Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasília – The Brazilian Supreme Court has ruled that the Clean Criminal Record law (“Ficha Limpa”), which makes politicians with criminal convictions ineligible for elective office, could not be used in last year’s general elections. As the law was used in the October general elections, a series of “corrections” will have to be made: some politicians who have taken seats in Congress will be out and others in.

In April 2010, Ficha Limpa arrived unsolicited, on the doorstep of the Chamber of Deputies in the form of a petition with 1.6 million signatures (over time, on the internet, another 3 million adherents signed it). Its genesis dates back all the way to 1997, when a civic organization began calling for political reforms.

In the beginning, deputies did not want to do anything with the Ficha Limpa petition. But public clamor in favor of the law grew. The Chamber of Deputies, and then the Senate, passed the law. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed it into law in June 2010. That is, close to 90 days before the October general election.

The Brazilian political landscape is full of elected officials with legal problems. Elective office has proved to be safe haven where politicians with criminal records are shielded from prosecution. The population was angry and frustrated with the election system. They were fed up with office holders who had big smiles and long rap sheets. But, because Brazilian voters have a dirty record of voting for bad politicians, the idea behind the Clean Criminal Record law was to go after the politicians themselves, making them ineligible to run for office. After Lula signed it into law, the population demanded the immediate enforcement of Ficha Limpa.

Overnight, the question of whether or not the Ficha Limpa law was binding on the October 2010 general elections became a burning issue. A legal issue.

Ficha Limpa lawsuits made their way to regional electoral courts (“Tribunal Regional Eleitoral – TRE”) and then to the Federal Electoral Court (“Tribunal Superior Eleitoral – TSE”) where the court voted to make Ficha Limpa binding in October. That ruling was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. At the Supreme Court, an impasse: the vote was tied 5 to 5 and during the election cycle it stayed tied (a tie caused by the retirement of the eleventh justice in August 2010 and the fact that another justice was not nominated before the elections).

The eleventh justice took his seat on the court at the beginning of March and on March 23 the country got a final decision on Ficha Limpa.

The ruling that the Ficha Limpa law will be valid only beginning with elections next year was criticized by the Movement to Combat Electoral Corruption (“Movimento de Combate à Corrupção Eleitoral -MCCE”), which coordinated the collection of signatures on the petition that got the law rolling. “We respect the decision. But we regret the postponement of an introduction of more ethical standards in elections,” declared Marlon Reis, a judge who is one of the MCCE leaders. “We can continue to hold our heads high. We are still working to get a political reform for our society,” he declared.

Reis points out that one of the peculiarities of the Brazilian voting system is the proportional election of deputies where candidates with long coattails can “pull” a bunch of other candidates in his political party into office even though the others have few votes. Reis said that a consequnce of the Ficha Limpa law was that if one of the long-coattail candidates loses his seat, the other candidates he pulled in will also lose their seats.

Allen Bennett - translator/editor The News in English - content modified
Link - Movimento de Combate à Corrupção Eleitoral lamenta decisão do STF sobre Lei da Ficha Limpa