Estadão demands that Hugo Motta issue an exemplary punishment for the deputies who occupied the Chamber's presiding table.
According to the newspaper, the president of the House demonstrates weakness by sending cases to the Inspector General's office instead of acting directly in the Ethics Committee.
247 - O Newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo In an editorial published on August 9th, the newspaper demanded that the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), adopt exemplary punishment against the 14 parliamentarians involved in the anti-democratic assault on the Board of Directors. According to the publication, the decision to refer the cases to the Inspector General's Office, instead of taking them directly to the Ethics Committee, reveals a lack of authority and an unjustifiable political retreat in the face of the seriousness of the recorded images.
O Estadão The newspaper states that if Motta were truly committed to regaining the respect lost after the episode, he would have skipped intermediate steps and immediately requested the removal of the deputies. The newspaper recalls that, in less serious cases, the Board of Directors has already applied sanctions without the need for a prior opinion from the Inspector General's Office, as happened with André Janones (Avante-MG) and Gilvan da Federal (PL-ES), suspended for three months simply for uttering insults.
The editorial's criticism also falls on the handling of the crisis. The text reports that former Speaker of the House Arthur Lira (PP-AL) had to negotiate with the protesters to get them to leave the Speaker's table, something that, according to the newspaper, further exposed Motta's political fragility. Allies tried to defend the Speaker, claiming that the maneuver prevented Bolsonaro supporters from posing as victims of police violence, but the Estadão He described this reading as "extraordinarily benevolent."
Among those indicted are Marcel van Hattem (Novo-RS) and 13 deputies from the PL party: Allan Garcês (MA), Bia Kicis (DF), Carlos Jordy (RJ), Caroline de Toni (SC), Domingos Sávio (MG), Júlia Zanatta (SC), Marco Feliciano (SP), Marcos Pollon (MS), Nikolas Ferreira (MG), Paulo Bilynskyj (SP), Sóstenes Cavalcante (RJ), Zé Trovão (SC), and Zucco (RS).
The group claimed that the invasion aimed to force a vote on measures favorable to former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest and about to be tried in the Supreme Federal Court for attempted coup d'état. The newspaper, however, suggests that the act may also have served to divert attention from the tariff increase imposed by the United States on Brazil—a measure that, according to the editorial, was partly orchestrated by the Bolsonaro family along with Donald Trump and came into effect this week.
The PL also filed a complaint against congresswoman Camila Jara (PT-MS), accusing her of pushing Nikolas Ferreira during the commotion, even though she did not participate in the assault on the presiding officer's table. Estadão He believes that treating this accusation with the same weight as the accusations against the 14 coup-plotting parliamentarians would worsen Motta's image of weakness.
According to the newspaper, the Speaker of the House needs to act firmly, taking inspiration from the example of Ulysses Guimarães, who said he only made decisions under pressure. Without exemplary punishment, the editorial concludes, Motta risks turning the Speakership into a merely decorative position and irreversibly losing authority over the House.