Nikolas Ferreira
O Superior Electoral Court
maintained, by a majority, the conviction of the federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira
(PL-MG). The parliamentarian will have to pay a fine of R$30,000 for spreading lies against President Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva (PT) during last year’s elections.
This Tuesday (28), the ministers of the STF evaluated an appeal by Nikolas’s lawyers against a sentence by Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the case’s rapporteur. However, it was not successful.
In December last year, the magistrate condemned the deputy and ordered the removal, from digital platforms, of a video in which the parliamentarian said that the PT governments had embezzled R$ 242.2 billion and that the resources could have been used in the Covid-19 pandemic.
The publication was made on the eve of the second round of elections and had 1.5 million views. Nikolas used decontextualized reporting to create the false information.
Moraes decision
The Supreme Minister argued, at the time, that there was abuse of freedom of expression, because the deputy propagated lies on the internet. This Tuesday, Moraes upheld the conclusion and voted for the appeal to be rejected.
“The Electoral Justice does not have the right, it has the duty to make its decisions really necessary instruments to guarantee our constitutional obligation of safeguarding free and legitimate elections”, declared the president of the Superior Electoral Court.
Ricardo Lewandowski, Cármen Lúcia, Benedito Gonçalves, Sérgio Banhos and Carlos Horbach followed Moraes’ vote. Raul Araújo did not follow the rapporteur.
“The contested political propaganda, in which there is the natural exercise of severe critical judgment between opponents, remained within the limits of freedom of expression and without relevant decontextualization of the representative coalition candidate’s speech, to the point of substantially altering the authentic content”, Minister Araújo said.
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