The Legislative Assembly of São Paulo (Alesp) approved today (17), in plenary, the cancellation of the mandate of former state deputy Arthur do Val (União Brasil) for breach of parliamentary decorum. The cassation was unanimously approved by the 73 deputies who were present for the vote. With the approval of the cassation, Arthur do Val, known as Mamãe Falei, is ineligible for a period of eight years.
For the impeachment request to be approved, a simple majority of votes was required, that is, 48 of the 94 deputies should vote yes.
The session that approved the cassation began at 4:45 pm and lasted less than two hours. When transmitting the result of the vote, the president of the House, Carlão Pignatari (PSDB), said that cases like that of the former deputy will be “punished strictly” by the assembly. “I am very sad that we are still hearing about harassment, machismo, sexism, not only against women, but against children and the elderly. I hope that, here in the Legislative Assembly, we can set a great example that this will no longer happen and that it will be punished with the utmost rigor”. Pignatari took the opportunity to apologize to the Ukrainian women who were offended by Arthur do Val.
In April of this year, Arthur do Val resigned from his position after Alesp’s Council of Ethics and Parliamentary Decorum had okay the report calling for his impeachment. Despite the resignation, he still had to face the process that made him ineligible. According to Alesp’s rules, the resignation of the mandate does not interrupt the cassation process.
Defense
Before the vote and the demonstrations of the parliamentarians, the lawyer Paulo Henrique Franco Bueno went to the plenary to defend the client. According to Bueno, this would be the “last attempt to cause reflection on the judgment of the process”.
The lawyer complained that legal formalities were not completed during the cassation process. “As abject and repugnant as the deputy’s speeches are, in our view, this is not serious enough for the revocation of the parliamentary mandate”, said Bueno, who compared Arthur do Val’s process with that of deputy Fernando Cury (União Brasil ), which was caught by Alesp cameras groping deputy Isa Penna (PCdoB).
“I cannot fail to mention here the recent case of deputy Fernando Cury, who was tried and sentenced to [cumprir] sentence of 180 days of suspension after having harassed, at this table, in this plenary, live, a fellow Member. He was sentenced with 180 days and former deputy Arthur do Val, for having sent a private audio, in a private group and leaked without his consent, is being impeached ”, complained the lawyer.
According to Bueno, the impeachment of Arthur do Val may set precedents in the history of the Assembly. “By judging this evidence to revoke the mandate, they consider it appropriate that your cell phones and messages serve as evidence, even if in private conversations, in private groups and leaked without their consent,” he said.
The lawyer added that Arthur do Val’s acts were carried out outside the country and criticized the fact that he was being tried even though he had already resigned from his position. “There is a legal impossibility of the request, since he practiced the acts while on leave from the position and, even more, as everyone knows, he is being tried after having resigned. He is doubly out of office and is on trial for acts he committed out of office, out of the country, which cannot be proved whether or not they occurred. There are flagrant vices and serious nullities in this process”, said the lawyer.
understand the case
The then deputy Arthur do Val went to the border between Slovakia and Ukraine, a country in a situation of war, to, according to him, help the Ukrainians against Russia. He sent audios to friends, later released by the press, in which he praised the beauty of Ukrainian refugees and said that the women there are “easy” because they are poor.
“As soon as this war is over, I will come back here. Detail: they look. And they are easy, because they are poor. And here my Instagram letter, full of subscribers, works great. I didn’t catch anyone, we didn’t have time, but I stuck to two groups of mines, and it’s unbelievable how easy it is”, said Arthur do Val in an excerpt of the audio sent in a private group on WhatsApp.
Upon arrival in Brazil, the deputy gave interviews confirming that he was the author of the audios and withdrew the pre-candidacy for the government of the state of São Paulo and admitted having made a mistake. “That’s not what I think. What I said was a mistake in a moment of excitement. The impression I get here is that I got there, there were a lot of people, and I said: ‘who wants to come with me, I’m going to buy something’. It’s not that. I went to do one thing, I sent an unhappy audio, and the impression that passed is that I went to do something else”, he said, at the time.
After the audios gained enormous repercussion on social networks and in the press, the Ethics Council began to receive dozens of representations from parliamentarians asking for the removal of the deputy’s mandate. The process was processed by the Ethics Committee, and the report that asked for the removal of Arthur do Val’s mandate was unanimously approved by the collegiate. The request was then transformed into a draft resolution and, as a result, a vote in plenary was necessary for the cassation to be approved, by a simple majority of votes.
