Dirceu: 'Clean Slate Law is absurd'
According to the former Workers' Party minister, the law set the country back; he also reiterated his criticism of the Supreme Federal Court for his conviction and 10-year, 10-month prison sentence in the Mensalão trial.
247 - Former minister José Dirceu, sentenced in the Mensalão corruption trial to 10 years and 10 months in prison, criticized the Clean Record Law to an audience of approximately one hundred Workers' Party (PT) militants in Chapecó, in western Santa Catarina, on Thursday night. "They created the Clean Record Law, which is a completely absurd law. Because it's retroactive. In Brazil, according to the Constitution, you can only be considered guilty when there is a final and unappealable judgment in the last instance... But now, it applies to the second instance. Even when it's in the first instance, it's already eliminated," he said.
At the end of January, the former Workers' Party minister, before an audience of approximately 800 people who filled the auditorium of the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) in Rio de Janeiro, summoned 'his people' for a crusade that, according to him, aims to prove that the highest court of Brazilian Justice erred in convicting him:
"The trial began eight years ago, when Roberto Jefferson, in a newspaper interview, denounced the mensalão scandal. Without any proof whatsoever, we began to be judged at that moment."
"We've been fighting for eight years, and I will continue. I will travel throughout Brazil in a long fight that is only just beginning. I will show that there was a mistake. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't be here. The Supreme Court ignored the broad right to a defense, it didn't allow for a contradictory defense."