Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday that he had guaranteed the freedom of an
"innocent"
by pardoning a deputy sentenced to prison by the Supreme Court for anti-democratic remarks.
“The clemency decree is constitutional and it will be enforced.
Previously, offenders were released and no one complained.
I liberate innocent people
,” said the head of state during a visit to an agricultural fair in Sao Paulo (southeast).
Daniel Silveira, a deputy from the hard core of Bolsonarism, was sentenced to 8 years and 9 months of imprisonment by the Supreme Court, which also ordered the cancellation of his mandate and declared him ineligible for eight years.
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The next day, Jair Bolsonaro granted him his presidential pardon, in the name of
"freedom of expression".
This decision caused an outcry, the opposition shouting at the
“institutional rupture”.
Several parties have filed appeals with the Supreme Court to overturn the pardon decree, which they consider unconstitutional.
The highest court in the country, the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this presidential pardon.
Daniel Silveira, 39, caused a scandal in February 2021, with the publication on his social networks of a video in which he copiously insults the judges of the Supreme Court, who “are useless” and deserve to be
“beaten up in the street".
This former police officer was arrested in the process, then placed under house arrest before being granted parole in November, pending his trial.
But he again made headlines last month, barricading himself in his office in Parliament to try to avoid – in vain – the installation of an electronic bracelet.
In Sao Paulo, President Bolsonaro also attacked the Supreme Court on another subject: the judgment on the validity of the
“time frame”
for the demarcation of indigenous reserves.
The Head of State and his allies in the agribusiness lobby in Parliament defend the thesis that indigenous peoples can only be allocated lands that they occupied in the year of the promulgation of the Constitution, in 1988. The Judgment was postponed last September and is expected to resume in June.
Reporter Edson Fachin, the first judge to rule, had voted against the
"temporal framework"
, believing that it would prevent the natives
"from fully exercising their right"
to occupy their ancestral lands.
"If Fachin emerges victorious, I only have two things left to do: either I hand over the keys (of power, editor's note) to the Supreme Court, or I do not take the judgment into account"
, launched, defiantly, Jair Bolsonaro on Monday .
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