By Ricardo Brito
BRASILIA, Sept 9 (Reuters) – Brazil’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Edson Fachin moved to contain a growing judicial crisis on Wednesday, ruling to remove the effects of rival decisions issued by fellow court members and calling an extraordinary session for next week.
A clash between justices in recent weeks has thrust Brazil’s highest court into its biggest crisis since the country’s return to democracy over four decades ago. The struggle comes just before Brazilians elect a new president and most of Congress in October.
Justice Flavio Dino ordered Brazil’s federal police chief, Andrei Rodrigues, to be reinstated immediately earlier on Wednesday. That reversed a decision issued on Tuesday by his colleague Andre Mendonca, who had ordered the removal of the police head and his intelligence chief.
Mendonca had removed both officials over allegations that members of the police had produced intelligence reports intended to monitor Mendonca and other authorities. The decision was backed by a majority of a five-member court panel, but the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva challenged it.
Dino argued the next day that the removals were unsupported by evidence and had a direct impact on ongoing investigations, citing an “equally real and immediate” risk of harm.
The situation led Fachin, who heads the court under a rotating presidency system, to suspend both rulings, keeping Rodrigues as head of the federal police until further notice.
In his ruling, Fachin gave Rodrigues 48 hours to provide information on the allegations and said he will decide whether to keep the police head in his post after that.
GROWING CRISIS
Fachin’s ruling was the latest development in a clash between Mendonca and another justice, Alexandre de Moraes, who accused Mendonca last week of abusing his authority when he made public material from an investigation into alleged fraud at the now-liquidated Banco Master.
The material exposed dozens of messages from the bank’s disgraced president to Moraes, prompting calls for an unprecedented investigation into a sitting Supreme Court justice.
Brazil’s institutions are being roiled by the widening investigations into Banco Master and alleged ties between the bank’s president, Daniel Vorcaro, and top government officials and opposition politicians.
In a separate decision on Wednesday, Fachin called a session for September 15, when the Supreme Court’s full bench of ten members is set to discuss Moraes’ alleged relationship with Vorcaro. Fachin has also suspended any probe into Supreme Court justices.
UNCERTAINTY AHEAD OF ELECTIONS
The court crisis has injected new uncertainty into the country’s tightly contested presidential race between leftist Lula and leading right-wing opponent Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, whose supporters are attempting to link Moraes and the corruption case to the president. Lula’s lead over the senator has all but been eliminated in polling.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Lula referred to the Banco Master case as the “greatest financial crime in Brazil’s history.”
“The Brazilian people need explanations and immediate measures to confront the institutional crisis that has taken hold of the judiciary,” Lula said.
Campaigning in the city where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, survived a stabbing attack eight years ago, Flavio Bolsonaro on Wednesday blamed Lula for the escalating crisis.
“Brazil is without a president, Brazil is without leadership. Everything that is happening is chaos left behind by Lula,” he said.
Brazilian markets rallied on Tuesday as traders pointed to two polls showing Bolsonaro and Lula statistically tied in a potential runoff ahead of the election.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito; Writing by Brendan O’Bolye and Fernando Cardoso; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Gareth Jones, Nia Williams and Tom Hogue)
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