The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) reported this Friday, 26, to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) that it sees no crime by Deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) in the Women’s Day speech.
The PSOL bench triggered the STF claiming that the deputy would have been transphobic. Nikolas Ferreira used the podium to say that ‘women are losing space for men who feel like women’. He also wore a wig and joked: “Today I feel like a woman, Congresswoman Nicole.”
The PGR defended that parliamentary immunity is ‘absolute’ on the premises of the Chamber, even if the speech can be considered in ‘bad taste’.
“In the case of a speech made in the sphere of the parliamentary house, the incidence of absolute immunity does not depend on the content of the speech made”, wrote the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic Lindôra Araújo.
The opinion of the PGR also states that the positions of Nikolas Ferreira reflect the opinions of his electorate. He was the most voted federal deputy in 2022.
“Inviolability protects the parliamentarian’s independence, allowing him to exercise his mandate with autonomy, fearlessness, freedom and transparency”, says another excerpt from the manifestation sent to Minister André Mendonça’s office.
Upon filing the crime news with the STF, PSOL stated that the deputy tried to ‘humiliate and embarrass the entire transsexual population’ and that the statements increase the risk of violence against transgender people.
The STF equated transphobia with the crime of racism in 2019. With the decision, anyone who discriminates against transgender people can be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
Nikolas Ferreira already responds to a lawsuit for saying that he would only call deputy Duda Salabert (PDT-MG) ‘he’. “He is man. That’s what’s on his certificate, regardless of what he thinks it is, “he said in an interview in December 2020, when both were councilors in Belo Horizonte.
The deputy was also denounced by the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais after defending the boycott of a private school in Belo Horizonte that allows the use of bathrooms according to the students’ gender identity.
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