Lewandowski suspends rule prohibiting political appointment for state-owned companies

the minister Ricardo Lewandowskido Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), suspended this Thursday, the 16th, a provision of the Law of State-owned Companies that restricted appointments of directors and directors who hold public office or who have worked in electoral campaigns for the direction of state-owned companies. This means that members of the structure of the federal, state and municipal governments, such as ministers, municipal and state secretaries, as well as advisors, can be appointed to positions in public companies. In his preliminary decision, the magistrate highlighted that the norm, approved in 2016, in the government of then President Michel Temer (MDB), creates distortions. “In spite of the laudable intentions of the legislator, I repeat, whose scope was to avoid the alleged political rigging of state-owned companies, as well as to immunize them against spurious influences, in fact, they ended up establishing unreasonable and disproportionate discrimination – therefore unconstitutional – against those who legitimately act in the governmental or party sphere”, says an excerpt from the order. “To begin with, they directly violate the principle of isonomy and the precept – basic in a democracy – according to which no one can be deprived of rights due to political conviction”, continues the rapporteur. The minister asked that the injunction be included in the agenda for a virtual plenary referendum.

Lewandowski is the rapporteur for a lawsuit filed by the PCdoB that questions restrictions on political appointments. The case was analyzed by the virtual plenary of the Court, but the analysis was suspended on March 11 due to a request for a review, that is, more time for analysis, by Minister André Mendonça, appointed by then President Jair Bolsonaro to the STF. This week, the PCdoB asked the minister to grant an injunction on the matter as it understands that the deadline for so-called mixed companies, companies with the government as the largest shareholder, is approaching the end of the term, to hold assemblies to choose their administrators. “Despite the well-intentioned intentions of the legislator in this regard, the State-Owned Companies Law, by all indications, went far beyond the limitations already established in the legal system, creating hypotheses for prohibiting the choice of administrators ‘which function as an absolute impediment to the appointment ‘”, adds the Minister of the Supreme.

The injunction granted by Lewandowski overturns the forty of 36 months imposed on leaders of political parties or who have acted in election campaigns for them to occupy management positions in public companies and mixed-capital companies. “The allegation that the contested devices serve to reduce the risk of capture of the state-owned company by party or union political interests, a factor supposedly responsible for some notorious cases of corruption, does not hold up”, evaluated the minister in the decision.