Brazil President’s Christmas Decree Draws a Firestorm, and a Rebuff

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RIO DE JANEIRO — From another president, a Christmas decree relaxing eligibility rules for nonviolent criminals seeking pardons might have been viewed as a benevolent act.

Yet benevolence is a not a sentiment Brazilians tend to apply to President Michel Temer, who set off a firestorm over the weekend by signing a decree that might one day spare him and several close allies dogged by corruption allegations from spending years in prison.

Mr. Temer billed the measure as an “indulto natalino,” or Christmas pardon. But prosecutors expressed outrage, calling the move an “insulto natalino,” or Christmas insult, signed by a deeply unpopular president who this year managed to stave off prosecution over accusations of condoning bribes, obstructing justice and helping mastermind a huge kickback scheme.

On Thursday, Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, the head of Brazil’s Supreme Court, suspended key provisions of the Christmas order, including one that would have relaxed the rules by allowing people to seek a pardon after serving one-fifth of their term, instead of one-quarter.

“Pardons are not and cannot become an instrument of impunity,” Justice Antunes Rocha said.

Attorney General Raquel Dodge had sought the court’s intervention, arguing that the decree would undermine Brazil’s vast corruption investigation, known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash. Asking the court to find the guidelines unconstitutional represented a remarkable staredown by Ms. Dodge of the president who appointed her this year.

Prosecutors had argued that the president’s decree would make plea bargains — a relatively new feature of Brazilian criminal law, but one that has been instrumental in the Lava Jato investigation — far less appealing.

The inquiry has exposed institutionalized bribery at large companies, including the state-owned oil giant, Petrobras, and Odebrecht, a construction company that admitted in legal proceedings that it had paid hundreds of millions of dollars to politicians across Latin America to secure contracts.

“This pardon is the most concrete act by President Temer against the mechanism of plea bargains and a clear sign that he wants to weaken the judiciary’s fight against corruption,” Monique Cheker, a federal prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro State, said in an interview Thursday.

A spokesman for the president referred questions to the Justice Ministry, which on Thursday defended the pardon guidelines as sensible. Justice Minister Torquato Jardim said over the weekend that Mr. Temer had felt this was “the right political moment for a more liberal stance on pardons.”

The administration could seek a review by the full court when it reconvenes in February.

In a separate case, Mr. Temer’s administration is seeking to bar the imprisonment of people convicted of crimes until their appeals have been exhausted. In a brief before the Supreme Court, the executive branch has argued that delaying prison sentences safeguards defendants’ rights. Prosecutors counter that such a move would represent a return to an era in which white-collar cases languished for years during appeals.

“It would do great harm to Lava Jato in the best of cases, delaying the execution of sentences for at least a decade,” said Roberson Pozzobon, a prosecutor assigned to a Lava Jato task force in Curitiba, the southern city where the investigation began. “This setback would mean the institutionalization of impunity and would therefore create a great incentive for criminal practices, notably corruption.”

These debates are playing out amid an effort by some lawmakers to vastly reduce the number of officials shielded from prosecution in conventional courts. The protection, which was established by Brazil’s 1988 Constitution upon the re-establishment of democracy, gives privileged legal standing to about 55,000 officials.

“It served an important role in the country in the 1980s, at a time when there was fear that people would be prosecuted for their words and their deeds back when the justice system was weak,” said Representative Efraim Filho, who backs the effort to curb the protection. “Now it’s an anachronism that conveys a message of impunity, of privilege, of an elite that is entitled to a different treatment than ordinary citizens.”

The legal protection allowed Mr. Temer to avoid being prosecuted early this year after Ms. Dodge’s predecessor, Rodrigo Janot, filed two sets of charges against him.

Mr. Temer spent much of the year horse-trading with lawmakers, who twice voted to prevent the cases from being referred to the Supreme Court, the only court where senior officials may be prosecuted. Mr. Temer called Mr. Janot a headline-grabbing, overzealous prosecutor and expressed hope that Ms. Dodge would be more measured.

The president, who came to power after helping orchestrate the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff last year, could still face charges when his term ends at the end of 2018. The newspaper O Globo reported in November that Mr. Temer’s allies had begun considering ways to extend his legal protection — for instance, by getting him appointed an ambassador.

The accusations Mr. Temer faces are potentially more scandalous than those that led to the downfall of Ms. Rousseff, who was impeached for tapping into central reserve funds to paper over budget shortfalls.

Yet Brazilians, who carried out large demonstrations while Ms. Rousseff’s fate was hanging in the balance, have not responded to the accusations against Mr. Temer with the same level of public outrage.

To understand why, Ms. Cheker, the prosecutor, said she looked to her own family. Her father, she said, is among those who see Mr. Temer as capable of mending Brazil’s economy as it emerges from a yearslong recession.

“Enough with impeachments,” the prosecutor said her father told her recently. “Brazil needs to move forward, people are going through hard times.”