Brazil: The deputy with the most votes in the elections sued electoral high court president for censorship

The deputy-elect Nikolas Ferreira, the most voted in the last election in the entire country, filed a legal complaint against Judge Alexandre de Moraes, president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), for his decisions in favor of the censorship of politicians, journalists and militants in social networks.

Ferreira, after receiving the vote of 1.4 million people in Minas Gerais, was suspended from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook by a court order signed by Moraes. The decision occurred after the Bolsonaro deputy shared a live broadcast of the group #BrazilWasStolen, which presented an audit highlighting a series of anomalies in the October elections.

The conservative legislator’s lawyers knocked on the doors of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and filed a file denouncing that Ferreira’s right to defense is restricted because he was not allowed access to the evidence that supports the suspension of his accounts on social networks.

The complaint was received by the auxiliary judge of Moraes in the presidency of the TSE, Marco Antônio Vargas, who decided for the moment to freeze the case. “The provisions are still in progress to defer access to the case,” he stated.

According to the lawyers, the future deputy “has no idea” of the reasons why his profiles on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were suspended, nor was it explained to him why his constitutional right to freedom of expression was struck down.

The decision is a “manifest restriction on the exercise of the right to defense” and his lawyers argue that the lack of knowledge of the evidence for a judicial decision violates his constitutional rights.

Ferreira asks for compensation for the time that he is censored. At the moment, “they have been causing colossal damage” to the deputy, both monetary and political and social.

His team of lawyers allege that, by preventing access to the file, Moraes’ office violates a binding precedent of the STF regarding the prerogatives of the defense to “have broad access to the evidence.”

The action filed by the elected deputy came to the spite of Judge Luiz Fux in the Supreme Court. Fux was appointed to the highest court by Dilma Rousseff in 2011, and has been one of Lula’s biggest defenders in recent years, so there is no hope in Ferreira’s sector that the lawsuit will prosper.

With information from Derecha Diario