If they don't violate the law, Lula will be in the election campaign ads on TV.

By Fernando Brito, editor of brick - Even with the Judiciary's traditional ill will towards Lula, the fate of the action requesting the 'early' declaration of the former president's ineligibility could not be reversed, as has been pointed out here from the beginning.

Rosa Weber's decision to "not consider the action"—in other words, to send it to the trash—by Kim Kataguiri, who requested that Lula be denied the right to be a candidate in advance—at least until his registration is definitively rejected—raises, however, an interesting question to be addressed in court.

If the Judiciary recognizes his right to be a pre-candidate and even a candidate, until the registration of his candidacy is definitively denied (which can be done until August 15th), how can he be prevented, while he is a candidate, from campaigning on equal terms with others, insofar as it does not interfere with the (absurd) provisional detention (yes, because he has not been convicted with a final and unappealable judgment and, constitutionally, is not considered guilty) in Curitiba?

The distortion of the law, produced by the Supreme Court's decision that the execution of a sentence "can" be carried out after a second-instance conviction (and always could, provided there were reasons of public order or guarantees of due process), a decision that was overturned by the TRF-4 (Regional Federal Court of the 2th Region) when it decided that it "must" be executed, regardless of justification, created this absurdity: Lula can be a candidate, but he cannot act as a candidate.

Let's imagine the following: the Electoral Court receives Lula's registration request on August 15th.

From then on, parties or candidates who wish to challenge it have five days to file a Challenge to Candidate Registration (Article 3 of Law 64/90). Even if the challenge is valid before the publication of the list of candidates with requested registration, as the TSE has already ruled, a period of seven days is opened for the contested party to respond (Article 4).

Even if the deadline for final arguments is "skipped" (an additional five days, according to article 5), it would still be 12 days. Respecting the deadlines for final arguments, as they should be (TSE ruling of November 28, 2016, in AgR-REspe No. 28623 and of September 15, 2004, in REspe No. 22785), there are an additional five days (article 6).

That would be 17 days. Plus, of course, the deadlines for filing appeals (three days, counted from the session in which the action is decided)5 and for their judgments, add a few more days, all this "at breakneck speed".

The fact is that election campaigning legally begins on August 16th, and free airtime on radio and television starts on August 26th.

11 days after the voter registration request.

Therefore, barring a violation of the law, Lula may appear in free election advertising.

But how can he do that if the judge prohibits him from speaking or recording, as required by law, his participation in the election broadcasts?

Judicial discretion creates these paradoxes.

Legally, Lula is entitled to at least a few days of election campaign advertising on radio and television. But he cannot do so, according to the doctor who is his jailer.

Does anyone doubt what will prevail? Or, in the unlikely event that some TSE (Superior Electoral Court) minister recognizes Lula's position, as Rosa Weber said today in the decision that dismissed Kim Kataguiri's arguments, that "Law has its time, institutions, rites and forms, basically in favor of essential legal certainty," who knows, maybe they'll call him "on-call"?