Letters from STF ministers did not seek to put pressure on, says professor after competition canceled at USP

A request for reconsideration must be taken to the Congregation of the Faculty of Law, responsible for the decision, and there is also the possibility of appealing to the University Council, the highest body of the institution.

In a statement sent this Saturday (8) to Folha, the lawyers state that the annulment, decided last Thursday (6), does not end the discussion at the administrative level and justify the letters as "spontaneous".

Fonseca is the son of STJ minister Reynaldo Soares da Fonseca.

The letters presented by Fonseca are the main point of controversy surrounding the selection process. According to the defense, "the documents were not intended to pressure or influence the members of the panel, but to attest to the candidate's professional and academic trajectory."

The notice did not provide for the presentation of recommendation texts. Lawyers say they were sent spontaneously.

In the competition - for PhD professor at the Department of Economic, Financial and Tax Law at the Faculty of Law at USP -, Fonseca was approved after the written test, didactic test, evaluation of the research project and analysis of the memorial. It was in the memorial that he included the letters.

The memorial, a document used to evaluate the trajectory of competitors, should narrate the academic career and highlight the five productions considered most relevant, accompanied by elements of the curriculum.

It was in this designated space that Fonseca decided to include the indications. Although they were not required, claims the defense, they were delivered in a public and transparent manner as elements intended to prove facts related to the candidate's academic and legal career.

The material had considerable weight within the memorial: there were ten letters, which occupied 24 of the 152 pages of the document. Among the signatories were four ministers from the STF -André Mendonça, Dias Toffoli, Edson Fachin and Gilmar Mendes-, two ministers from the STJ, Ribeiro Dantas and Gurgel de Faria, and the then Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, in addition to other authorities.

Candidate Élida Graziane Pinto, attorney for the TCE-SP (São Paulo State Audit Court), who was also running for the position, contested the result and pointed out possible violations of the principles of impersonality, isonomy and administrative morality.

For her, the documents were not generic statements about the candidate. The signatories reported professional and academic experiences they had with Fonseca.

The professor worked as an advisor in STF offices and was supervised by Gilmar Mendes in his master's degree at UnB (University of Brasília). In one of the letters, Mendes also reported having recommended Fonseca for a teaching position at the IDP (Brazilian Institute of Teaching, Development and Research), an institution of which he is a partner.

In evaluating the memorial, 1 of the 5 members of the panel, professor Gilberto Bercovici, gave Fonseca a zero score. The other four voted for approval, a result that led the candidate to surpass the other five competitors.

The defense states, however, that Fonseca was approved based on a process conducted within the regular stages and that his academic trajectory, teaching performance and legal experience were evaluated by the panel.