Solicitor General Wants Carte Blanche for Police to Enter Universities
By Harold Emert
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s Solicitor General, André Mendonça, has requested that the nation’s Supreme Court authorize the entrance of police onto campuses at Brazilian public universities when necessary to stop “illegal electoral propaganda”.
The Brazilian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and autonomy on university campuses.
The request is President Jair Bolsonaro’s most recent response to a controversy created last year during the election campaign, when students hung up banners “against Fascism”, referring indirectly to the army captain’s right-wing presidential candidacy.
Bolsonaro recently labeled students protesting against his proposed 30 percent cuts at federal universities “useful innocents”, after having previously called them “useful idiots”.
In a speech, last December in Iguaçu Falls, southern Brazil, Bolsonaro’s future Education Minister Abraham Weintraub called for “a hunt for communists as a way of ending cultural marxism at Brazilian universities”.
Before Bolsonaro’s election as President in 2018, police in several Brazilian states entered federal universities, halting political rallies and tearing down banners.
At the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) law faculty, armed military police accompanied election inspectors who tore down “Against Fascism” flags. Irate students later restored the flags.
Police incursions into Universities were halted by an injunction signed on October 27th, 2018, by STF’s then Presiding Justice, Carmen Lucia.
She ruled that banners and protests were not propaganda, but manifestations of political opinion because there were no candidates’ names or election numbers on the banners.
Brazil’s highest court additionally suspended law enforcement officers from collecting documents or interrupting lessons, debates or protests by university students and professors.
The Solicitor General argues: “The university should be recognized as a place for liberal debate of ideas, but without the prevalence of any specific thought.”
“The major question, however, is to define what is electoral propaganda and free expression,” says Professor Daniel Falcão, an expert in electoral and constitutional law.
In an interview with O Globo newspaper, Falcão adds: “During last year’s elections, judges requested universities to remove banners, but this was not electoral propaganda. To be considered propaganda, it must seek votes for candidates or mention the number [that appears on the ballot] of the candidate or political party.”
Falcão asks: “Will police be able to differentiate between what is and what is not
political propaganda?”
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