MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil's STF Judges against adding magistrates to the bench

Mourao will press for a lowering of the retiring age for judges

Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) judges Tuesday voiced their opinion against President Jair Bolsonaro's proposal to increase the number of STF magistrates from 11 to 16, albeit under anonymity.

Vice-President Hamilton Mourao, already a Senator-elect for the next legislature, has announced he would press for a lowering of the retiring age for judges.

According to Brazilian press reports, members of the STF have dubbed the initiative as authoritarian but would avoid any controversy less than 3 weeks before the runoff ballot between Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Venezuela's “Hugo Chávez, [Hungary's] Víktor Orbán and [former US President Franklin] Roosevelt tried to do it,” a judge was quoted as saying. Argentina also undertook such a move under President Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

Former STF Chief Justice Marco Aurelio Mello told UOL that Bolsonaro's plan was “pure nostalgia for the military dictatorship” and “a rhetorical outburst that does not deserve the support of good men.”

Fellow former CJ Celso de Mello said the initiative entailed the “perverse and unconstitutional purpose of controlling the STF and compromising the independence of the powers.”

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro once again questions Brazil's electoral system and threatened not to recognize the results in case of defeat. In a speech Tuesday, Bolsonaro was suspicious of the number of votes Lula got in the Oct. 2 first round “when people are not on his side.”

”The result will be the one we all expect because the other side (the left) does not manage to gather anyone. We all distrust,“ Bolsonaro said in the town of Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul.

Bolsonaro called his followers to ”remain in the area of the electoral section” where they vote until the results are published, despite Brazil's electoral law providing otherwise.