The Federal Supreme Court (STF) formed a majority this Wednesday (27) to overturn an amendment made by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the deliberative council of the FNMA (National Environment Fund).
So far, 9 votes to 1 have been counted against the act that excluded the council’s civil participation, establishing an understanding among the ministers that the change sponsored by Palácio do Planalto represented a setback in the environmental area.
The trial was interrupted and will resume this Thursday (28) with the intervention of the president of the court, Luiz Fux, who promised a “dense” vote.
Two other decrees are under analysis in the same action, one that revoked the participation of governors in the National Council of the Legal Amazon and another that extinguished the Guiding Committee of the Amazon Fund. As for these, there was also a majority of votes to overthrow them.
The debate is part of the so-called “green agenda”, seen as the Supreme Court’s reaction to what is considered a dismantling of public policies under Bolsonaro, especially those related to the Amazon.
The action was proposed by Rede Sustentabilidade to question the validity of the 2020 decree by Bolsonaro and Ricardo Salles, then Minister of the Environment, which removed civil society from the FNMA’s board.
After the contested act was issued, the council was formed only by members of federal government agencies, such as the Ministries of the Environment, Civil House and Economy.
The fund’s mission is to collaborate, as a financing agent, with the implementation of the National Environmental Policy. It was created by law of 1989.
According to the Network, “the participatory democratic character of the FNMA’s Deliberative Council has been completely extinguished, and the body is at risk of losing its raison d’être”.
The party said that, in environmental policy, the Constitution preaches the need for the direct participation of the people, as an instrument for realizing the principle of substantial equality.
The Attorney General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, opposed the action. In his demonstration, the head of the Federal Public Ministry criticized non-governmental organizations operating in the Amazon.
“Five years ago, in a survey carried out by the press and official bodies, there were 3,300 NGOs in this country, 3,000 in the Amazon, 300 in the rest of Brazil. This fact imposes a certain caution on us so that national interests, so that popular sovereignty is , in a substantive democracy that we so desire, preserved, guaranteed and defended throughout society by the state through its institutions”, he said.
Rapporteur of the action, Cármen Lúcia affirmed in her vote that the elimination of civil society shows “a centralization that would be undemocratic”, which offends the principle of popular participation.
“The popular participation of civil society in all instances has always been encouraged by the Constitution, legislation and international documents,” he said.
With regard to the FNMA, ministers Ricardo Lewandowski, Alexandre de Moraes, Edson Fachin, Luís Roberto Barroso, André Mendonça, Rosa Weber, Dias Toffoli and Gilmar Mendes accompanied their colleague, forming the majority.
Kassio Nunes Marques, in turn, disagreed and criticized Carmen’s vote. According to him, other presidents have also made changes to councils and preventing the exclusion of civil society from one of them is a way of delegitimizing future governments elected by popular vote.
“Repristine a decree that, by political choice in the past, provided for popular participation in a council is, in practice, to impose this direct participation as a minimum instrument of direct democracy without this constitutional requirement,” he said.
Carmen countered Kassio. He said that his vote did not say that the President of the Republic is prohibited from altering councils, as long as he does not exclude a representative of civil society.
This is the third of seven actions of the so-called “green agenda” that began to be judged by the STF in recent weeks. The analysis of two processes that questioned alleged omissions by Bolsonaro about deforestation in the Amazon was also started simultaneously.
After a long vote by the rapporteur, which took almost two sessions of the STF, Mendonça asked for a view (more time for analysis) and interrupted the judgment of these actions.
The minister voted to order the government to present, within 60 days, an “effective and satisfactory” execution plan to reduce deforestation and protect the rights of indigenous peoples living in the region.
Mendonça, in turn, stated that he is the rapporteur of other actions that also talk about damage to the Constitution in actions in the Amazon and Pantanal.
In his case, the processes also involve the states, in addition to the Union, and the minister says he wants to analyze the situation together. “We need, in order to have an answer, in my opinion, adequate to this question, to also address the responsibility of the states”, he affirmed.
