Daniella Jinkings Reporter Agência Brasil
Brasília – There are 243 fixed seats for spectators at the Brazilian Supreme Court (“STF”). For the trial of Penal Case 470 (“Ação Penal 470”), universally (at least in Brazil) known as the mensalão, which begins at 2:00 pm today, 152 seats have been reserved for defendants and their lawyers. Another 75 seats will be for journalists.
Court spokespersons say that additional seats, besides fixed seats, will be available but that as ministries have a right to reserve places the exact number is not known. The public gets seats on a first-come-first-served basis.
As is usual for STF sessions, there are dress rules: men have to wear a coat and tie, women pants suits or tailleurs. Tennis shoes, sandals and blue jeans are not permitted. It is also prohibited to take pictures except for official photographers.
Parking near the court may be difficult, but there are the PGR and TCU parking lots nearby and a van that runs regularly from them to the Supreme Court.
STF security guards, along with Federal District Military Police, will be responsible for safeguarding the trial. If necessary, the Força Nacional and Federal Police can be called in.
The trial can be followed live on television (TV Justiça, channel 53 UHF in Brasilia or channel 117 Sky; Rádio Justiça 104.7 FM in Brasilia and on the internet).
The mensalão is translated as the "big monthly allowance or stipend" in which 38 defendants face from one to seven criminal charges stemming from varying degrees of participation in a huge vote-buying scheme (in which members of Congress were paid monthly amounts to vote with the government) during the first Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva administration. The case was made public in 2005 and arrived at the Supreme Court in the same year (at that time, eleven of the defendants were federal deputies and they had special criminal venue (“foro privilegiado”) meaning they could only be tried for crimes before the Supreme Court). For that reason, the whole case, all 38 defendants, is being tried at the STF (defense lawyers have challenged that in the past and are expected to do so once again today). At this moment, only three of them are federal deputies.
Among the defendants is José Dirceu, who was then presidential Chief of Staff (“ministro-chefe da Casa Civil”) on leave from his seat in the Chamber of Deputies where he represented the state of São Paulo. In June 2005, he resigned as head of the Casa Civil. In December 2005, he was expelled (“cassado”) from the Chamber of Deputies.
Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English
