PSD's airtime can be shared with other parties.

Legal Consultant - Parties that do not have representation in the Chamber of Deputies are also entitled to a share, albeit smaller, of the time reserved for mandatory election advertising. This was the understanding reached this Wednesday (June 27) by Minister Dias Toffoli of the Supreme Federal Court.

Only Toffoli voted. The trial, which was suspended after four hours of the vote being read without a decision on the matter, will resume this Thursday (June 28). The minister did not address the central issue of the trial: whether deputies who migrate to a newly created party, which did not exist in the last elections, take their representation to the new party along with their mandate.

The answer to this question will define the strength of the PSD in the 2012 municipal elections, since knowing whether it will be entitled to airtime for campaign advertising and money from the party fund is fundamental for negotiating political alliances.

In Wednesday's session, Minister Dias Toffoli voted to remove the phrase "and representation in the Chamber of Deputies" from paragraph 2 of article 47 of the Elections Law (Law 9.504/1997). According to the rule, "the time slots reserved for campaign advertising for each election, as per the previous paragraph, will be distributed among all parties and coalitions that have a candidate and representation in the Chamber of Deputies."

Minister Dias Toffoli deemed the expression constitutional, but maintained the provisions that stipulate that one-third of the campaign time will be divided equally and the other two-thirds proportionally to the number of party representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. In other words, time is guaranteed to all, but favors those with more elected federal deputies.

The PHS party, which filed one of the two direct actions of unconstitutionality with the Supreme Court, demanded an equal division of all electoral advertising time. According to Justice Dias Toffoli, everyone has the right to advertising time, but this division cannot be equal.

This Thursday, the minister will address the question that the political world has been waiting for: whether a party that has representation but did not participate in the last elections is entitled to a share of the party political broadcast time — as is the case with the PSD, which has 52 federal deputies and is the fourth largest party in the Chamber of Deputies.

The ministers must decide on the matter by Friday because the deadline for holding party conventions, according to electoral law, is June 30th. And July 5th is the final deadline for parties to register their candidates and inform which coalitions they are forming.

The future of the PSD will be defined in the judgment of Direct Action of Unconstitutionality 4.795, filed by seven political parties on June 11th. In the action, DEM, PMDB, PSDB, PPS, PR, PP and PTB argue that a party that did not participate in the last elections — that is, that did not go through the test of the ballot box — cannot participate in the allocation of political advertising time.

The PSD, on the other hand, wants access to the rights guaranteed to other parties, arguing that, even without having participated in the last elections, it has a significant number of representatives in parliament. In other words, it would be entitled to airtime proportional to the number of votes its representatives received in the 2010 elections, even if they were in other parties.

The action before the Supreme Court only covers the issue of the right to the allocation of airtime for electoral advertising on radio and TV. However, since the underlying theme is the same as the action in which the PSD (Social Democratic Party) requests access to resources from the party fund, which is being processed in the Superior Electoral Court, the decision will, in practice, define both things.