Public Note #8 – Threats to democracy and human rights

The Arns Commission publicly expresses its vehement repudiation and deep concern about the recurring threats to democracy and human rights perpetrated by federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, which culminated in his recent statement in favor of the adoption of “a new AI-5” as a response to a potential radicalization of Brazil’s left-wing political spectrum.

Institutional Act Number Five, issued by the military regime on December 13, 1968, was the greatest expression of the exception regime imposed on Brazil between 1964 and 1985.

Institutional Act Number Five overruled the Constitutional Charter enacted in 1967, transferring full powers to the dictator in the exercise of the presidency of the Republic, to determine the recess of the National Congress, the Legislative Assemblies, and Municipal Chambers; to intervene in federative states and municipalities; to suspend political rights; to set restrictions on all other rights. Institutional Act Number Five also authorized the dismissal, removal, and retirement of public civil servants and the confiscation of private assets.

In order to ensure that the arbitrary ruling power could be exercised unlimitedly, Institutional Act Number 5 suppressed habeas corpus and excluded from the Judiciary's appreciation "all acts performed in accordance with this Institutional Act and its Complementary Acts, as well as their corresponding effects”.

Institutional Act Number Five thus provided the broadest freedom possible to the arbitrary political regime. From then on, the National Congress had its activities suspended. Parliamentarians with a popular mandate had their terms of office revoked. Three Justices of the Federal Supreme Court were compulsorily retired. Thousands of Brazilians had their political rights suspended. Dissidents were arbitrarily arrested, several were tortured, and others executed, as documented by the National Truth Commission. Under the shadow of Institutional Act Number Five, agents of the Brazilian State committed crimes against humanity that still remain unpunished.

By suggesting the adoption of a new AI-5, as a response to the possible radicalization of demonstrations against the government, federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro not only threatened Brazilian society and its democratic institutions but also breached the commitment to “defend and comply with the Constitution”, which he solemnly assumed when he took office as a federal deputy, in January 2019.

By proposing the adoption of exceptional measures absolutely foreign to the Constitution and the democratic regime it establishes, he once again performed an act of absolute lack of commitment to fundamental rights, the separation of powers, the federation, and popular voting, which are all values ​​protected as stony clauses by article 60, paragraph 4 of the Federal Constitution of 1988.

The Arns Commission, once again concerned with this further threat to human rights and democracy, expects that the Chamber of Deputies will take all appropriate measures to prevent parliamentary immunities, designed to enable democratic debate and ensure the full exercise of the popular mandate, from being abusively used with the perfidious and cowardly objective of violating rights and constraining the free functioning of the Legislative and Judiciary powers, as occurred from the issuance of AI-5.