05/07/2024 – 18:20
The minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Cármen Lúcia should be elected this Tuesday, 7th, to command the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) for the next two years. The symbolic vote is scheduled for the 7pm session, but the inauguration should only take place from June 3rd, with the end of the mandate of the current president of the Court, Minister Alexandre de Moraes. About to complete 18 years at the Supreme Court, the judge states that the court is not “activist”, but defends that judges do not remain silent when called upon – a thought that should also guide her second term at the Electoral Court.
In both the TSE and the STF, the minister is known for her votes and firm positions. On some occasions, she even interrupted colleagues to express her point of view and refute arguments with which she disagreed. As in the vote, in April 2023, in a case of fraud in electoral gender quotas in the municipality of Itaiçaba, in Ceará, in which the minister responded to her colleague Nunes Marques that women cannot be treated as “poor things” in the electoral dispute . “We don’t need empathy, we need respect,” she said at the time. Cármen was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, in 2006, and is currently the only female representative on the court. The minister was also the first woman to command the Electoral Court, in 2012.
In June last year, Cármen Lúcia’s vote was decisive in the trial that made former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) ineligible until 2030. The TSE formed a score of 5 votes to 2 to classify the former head of the Executive for abuse of political power and misuse of the media. Cármen argued that Bolsonaro performed a “self-promotion monologue” with the public structure at a time when electoral propaganda was prohibited. In the most scathing part of the vote, he accused the former president of trying to “undermine” the reliability of the electoral process and, in doing so, put Brazilian democracy at risk, attributing to Bolsonaro a “conscience of perverting”.
The expectation among jurists and magistrates is that she will continue Moraes’ work, continuing with measures aimed at guaranteeing the Democratic Rule of Law, especially after the January 8th attacks, and measures for municipal elections.
A month before assuming the presidency of the TSE, the minister has already been working on combating fake news and discussing a legal system capable of containing the speed and intensity with which artificial intelligence tools can interfere with the country’s electoral health.
As an example of this, at the beginning of the year, Cármen coordinated public hearings to define the rules for the October municipal elections. At the end of the cycle, in February, the court approved resolutions to regulate the use of artificial intelligence by candidates and parties, prohibit deepfake in the creation of false content that can influence electoral campaigns and regulate the dissemination of voting intention surveys, among others on the electoral calendar and voter registration schedule.
In March, the Integrated Center for Combating Misinformation and Defense of Democracy was inaugurated, yet another measure to combat the dissemination of fake news and hateful, prejudiced and anti-democratic speeches with the potential to affect this year’s municipal elections. The Court also has a group responsible for monitoring social networks to identify this type of content harmful to democracy, called the Special Advisory for Combating Disinformation, created in February 2022 during the mandate of Minister Edson Fachin, of the STF, as president of the TSE.
In the STF, among the processes with the greatest repercussion in recent years, the minister voted in favor of the Clean Record Law, the Maria da Penha Law, stem cell research, in addition to being in favor of same-sex unions and abortion in cases of anencephalic fetuses, if the woman decides.
The expectation in the Electoral Court is that it will integrate the less “conservative” wing and more aligned with Moraes, with ministers André Ramos Tavares and Floriano de Azevedo Marques. On another line, there are ministers Raul Araújo, Isabel Gallotti and Nunes Marques – which should also be composed of Mendonça.
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