CARLOS PETROCILO
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
After 503 days, the São Paulo City Council approved the revocation of the mandate of councilor Camilo Cristófaro (Avante), accused of racism, for breach of parliamentary decorum, this Tuesday (19).
Of the 55 councilors, 47 were in favor of punishment, and no one voted for acquittal. There were 5 abstentions and one absentee, Ely Teruel (Podemos). Cristófaro and Luana Alves (PSOL), who reported the councilor to the Internal Affairs Department and the police, did not vote.
The councilor needed at least 19 votes, equivalent to a third of the House, to save his mandate. Now, he will be ineligible for eight years, and substitute Adriano Santos (PSB) takes over the position.
There were protests outside the Chamber, with slogans against racist acts and samba and capoeira circles. In the auditorium, the galleries were divided between supporters of the councilor and those calling for his impeachment, with posters and banners.
In his defense, Cristófaro stated that the protesters who asked for his departure received R$50 and a basic food basket to ask for his impeachment, which he classified as “execution”, and said that they needed to be ashamed.
“These people don’t know what they’re talking about. I have 150 projects in this city, 90% of the people benefiting are black. Heliópolis has what? Brasilândia has what? Peruche, has what?”, said the councilor, who is from Ipiranga (south zone).
At the hottest moment, councilor Adilson Amadeu (União Brasil) went towards Cristófaro’s lawyer, Ronaldo Alves de Andrade. They both looked at each other and talked, and Amadeu felt sick. He was rescued by the Chamber’s medical team.
Amadeu was irritated by the fact that Andrade recalled the day Amadeu called a colleague a “Jewish son of a bitch”.
The impeachment is the last chapter of one of the worst embarrassments in the São Paulo Legislature, at least in the Chamber. Cristófaro has already gone to court to regain his mandate, but has not yet received a favorable decision.
UNDERSTAND THE CASE
The impeachment of a councilor for racism is the first in the country, according to the House.
On May 3, 2022, Cristófaro used the expression “it’s a black thing” to refer to the dirt on the sidewalks. The phrase was captured by the Chamber’s sound system during a session of the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) on Applications.
At the time, councilor Luana Alves (PSOL) immediately reprimanded Cristófaro and considered the act “extremely racist”. At first, the councilor said he was referring to the color of a car. Afterwards, he thought it was a joke with a friend.
Cristóforo’s defense witnesses reiterated to the Chamber’s Internal Affairs that it was a gesture directed at his friend Anderson Silva Medeiros.
After a long process, the majority of the seven members of the Internal Affairs Department accepted the report by Marlon Luz (MDB), rapporteur of the case, in August this year.
“The councilor reinforced the socially abominable perception that black people are necessarily tasked with performing manual labor,” wrote the rapporteur in his vote.
Cristófaro went to court, through a writ of mandamus with a request for an injunction, to try to stop this Tuesday’s session.
The councilor’s defense claims that his right to defense was restricted in the Chamber’s Internal Affairs Department. He also reiterates that there is no crime of racism attributed to him and that the parliamentarian’s political image suffers irreparable damage.
In a decision taken early this Tuesday afternoon, the judge of the Court of Justice Souza Meirelles did not grant the injunction to suspend the session.
Cristófaro was acquitted of the accusation of racism in court. In a decision published on July 13, judge Fábio Aguiar Munhoz understood that the councilor’s speech was taken from a context of “joking, joking, but never from a context of segregation, discrimination or anything like that”.
The decision is of first instance, and the Public Ministry has already appealed. When contacted by Folha de S.Paulo on the occasion, the Avante parliamentarian said that “justice and truth won”.
Averse to interviews to talk about the case, Cristófaro has been defending himself through videos. In one of them, he questions “what’s worth more, a two-second sentence out of context, or the thousands of hours I dedicate to the most needy communities in this city.”
Elected for the first time in 2016, Cristófaro accumulated controversies and accusations of racial insults throughout his two terms.
Folha de S.Paulo exclusively showed, in May last year, that he is accused by nursing assistant Dilza Maria Pereira da Silva of racial insult. After a complaint from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the case is being processed in court.
In the Chamber, Cristófaro already called councilor Fernando Holiday (PL) an auditorium monkey in the plenary in 2019. In 2018, he also made a video in which he pulled his eyes referring to councilor George Hato (MDB), who has Japanese ancestry.
The post Accused of racism, Camilo Cristófaro is impeached and loses his mandate as councilor in SP appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
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