Débora Zampier Reporter Agência Brasil
Brasília – With 27 legally registered political parties fielding candidates, it is common for Brazilian politicians to join coalitions of political parties in order to ensure their election to the Chamber of Deputies. Elections to the lower House are proportional. But even so, with so many parties, a coalition is usually a good idea. Political parties in coalitions should be big, if possible, and the more of them, the better. For example, Dilma Rousseff was elected at the head of a coalition of eleven political parties.
After elections, it is common for Brazilian politicians to move around. More than forty members of the Congress, elected in October last year, will leave their seats to occupy positions in the federal or state governments. However, upon leaving Congress, they do not resign; they go on a leave of absence and a substitute takes their seats. In the future, they can return to their congressional seats and the substitutes go home. The substitutes are known as “suplentes.”
In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that seats in Congress belong to the political parties not coalitions. The decision came in a case involving a politician who abandoned his political party to join another political party. Switching political parties is pretty common in Brazil.
But the 2007 Supreme Court decision raised a thorny question: did it also apply to the case of suplentes? Traditionally, a suplente was the next most-voted candidate from the coalition that elected the politician who was going on a leave of absence.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled on a suplente case specifically, deciding that the seat belonged to the political party, not the coalition. In that vote, Cezar Peluso (the Chief Justice), and associate justices Marco Aurélio Mello, Gilmar Mendes, Joaquim Barbosa and Cármen Lúcia voted that the seat belonged to the political party the elected member came from. Celso de Mello, Ricardo Lewandowski, Carlos Ayres Britto and Antonio Dias Toffoli said it belonged to the coalition that originally elected the member of Congress. However, there was a problem with the vote: it was incomplete as the court had a vacancy (Eros Gros had retired in August) and one justice (Ellen Gracie) was absent (there are eleven justices on the Brazilian Supreme Court).
Yesterday, the Supreme Court, now complete (Luiz Fux joined the Court in March), voted 10 to 1 that the seat belongs to the coalition. What seemed to be a surprising about face (at least by four justices: Carmen Lucia, Cezar Peluso, Gilmar Mendes and Joaquim Barbosa) was in reality a ratification of what had already taken place in the Chamber of Deputies where 25 suplentes from coalitions have been seated since the beginning of this year.
Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English - content modified
Link - STF decide hoje se vaga de suplente na Câmara é do partido ou da coligação
Link - STF decide por maioria que suplência da Câmara dos Deputados é da coligação
