Presidential election in Brazil: a committee of UNO, asks the government to let Lula present itself to the presidential election

At a few hours of a new televised debate between the principal candidates to the presidency, the declaration of the Committee of the human rights of UNO (HCDH) asking Brazil to let Lula present itself to the presidential election, adding that its candidature could be cancelled “only when its calls in justice are examined in an equitable way”.

But the government does not feel concerned, and the candidature of Lula is always suspended with a decision of the court.

The lawyer of Lula reacted immediately, Christiano Zanin hastened to require the participation of the former president in the electoral campaign, following the deposit of his candidature.

“From the moment when Brazil adhered to the jurisdiction of the Committee of the human rights of UNO, and that goes back to 2009, Brazil east in the obligation to respect the decisions taken by this international agency”, he declared Zanin.

This committee, which is a watchdog committee of the High commissionership of the United Nations to the human rights, is charged to take care of the respect of the international Pact relating to the civil laws and policies and the optional protocol which is associated there. As Brazil ratified these two texts, it is technically obliged to respect the decisions of the committee.

For the former Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, a close relation of Lula, this polemic could sully the image with Brazil abroad. “Of two things one, he launched, or Brazil respects this decision, or he is posed in bet international”.

The parquet floor for its part did not make any statement for the moment, but the Brazilian government quickly retorted. According to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, this committee of UNO can only put forth recommendations, and it has been well the Brazilian justice which must have the last mot. But, the electoral higher Court did not yet rule on the validity of the candidature of Lula, condemned for corruption and imprisoned for four months.

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, also published an amusing tweet of this decision of the CDH: “We greet the fact that the Committee of the human rights of UNO, the greatest organization of world integration, recognize the legitimacy of the candidature of the brother Lula for the presidency of Brazil. The world is conscious of the conspiracy between oligarchy and Brazilian justice. The truth will triumph…”

After the declaration of the committee of UNO, Dilma Rousseff, which had succeeded Lula with the president before being relieved in 2016, was delighted by these conclusions: “Lula is innocent. Lula is candidate to the presidency of the Republic”, she wrote on Twitter.

The Minister for Justice, Torquato Jardim, has declares that it does not have legal relevance. Both are qualified for “the political intrusion and the ideological intrusion in a technico–legal question”.

Sarah Cleveland, vice–president of the committee of UNO, itself explained the reason of the refusal.

“So that a State is invited to take measures of precaution, it should be shown that it violates in an irrevocable way some of the precepts of the international Pact relating to the civil laws and policies”.

Brazilian justice reproaches him in Lula for having received a luxurious apartment in seaside on behalf of a building firm in return for favours in obtaining public contracts, which he always categorically denied, calling upon the absence of evidence and denouncing a plot aiming to prevent it from aspiring to a third mandate. For many its supports, this judgment constitutes “a legal coup d‘etat.

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Gabriel MIHAI

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