08/10/2024 – 19:55
Minister Luiz Fux, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), ordered the suspension of the improbity action brought by the Public Ministry of São Paulo (MP-SP) to force the University of São Paulo (USP) to dismiss vice-rector Maria Arminda of Nascimento Arruda. The MP claims that she cannot perform the role because she has already retired compulsorily at the age of 75. The case is being processed in the 13th Public Finance Court of São Paulo.
The decision is provisional and, in practice, guarantees that the vice-rector will remain in office until a more in-depth analysis of the case. The minister requested information from USP before judging the case. Maria Arminda’s term ends in 2026.
In a preliminary analysis, Fux considered that the university’s management positions are elective in nature and, therefore, those appointed do not need to be active professors.
“Take care of the exegesis that, for now, best honors university autonomy, which, evidently, is projected in the definition of the norms for the composition of the governing bodies of the University of São Paulo. Furthermore, the elective nature of the position in question indicates that its legal regime does not necessarily have the same limitations imposed by the Constitution on occupants of permanent positions”, says Fux’s preliminary decision.
Judge Maria Gabriella Pavlópoulos Spaolonzi, of the 13th Public Finance Court, was notified of the minister’s decision and ordered the postponement of the conciliation hearing that she had called. “The cancellation of the act is noted,” says the order.
Impropriety action
It is the governor of São Paulo who chooses the full professors who will occupy the rectory and vice-rectorships at USP, from a triple list defined in an election within the university community.
When filing the action, the Public and Social Heritage Prosecutor’s Office of the Capital – an arm of the São Paulo Public Ministry that investigates cases of improbity – asked that the rector Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Junior and the vice-rector be ordered to return the amounts which she received as a bonus since taking office, in 2022, and to pay a fine and compensation for “collective moral damage to São Paulo society”. The total charged in the process amounts to R$482,456.70.
“The loss to the public treasury also arises, in this case, due to the notorious loss of public money spent to maintain this internal policy, for more than a decade, by the University of São Paulo”, claims the MP.
Prosecutors Silvio Marques, Cíntia Marangoni and Karyna Mori, who signed the action, accuse USP of abusing university autonomy.
“The educational institution uses the mantle of university autonomy to, in defiance of the Magna Carta, create its own normative locus, in which its internal deliberations are capable of overriding the will of the Constituent,” says another excerpt from the process.
For the promoters, the civil servants’ relationship with USP ends at the time of retirement, “so that the exercise of the role of rector and vice-rector is logically limited by the compulsory retirement that affects the teaching position”.
When the Public Ministry filed the action, USP published a statement refuting the action. The university states that the term of office at the rectory has a “sui generis” nature, analogous to the system of commissioned positions, and is not subject to the same rules applied to permanent positions, as is the case with compulsory retirement at age 75.
The institution further argues that the rector and vice-rector assumed the mandate “guided by a management program, which will end together, and, therefore, it is not up to the rector, nor the University Council, to dismiss the vice-rector from the position” .
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