RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) – For more than a month, Rio de Janeiro has been governed by an unelected judge who still presides over the state’s highest court, while the Supreme Court has yet to decide whether the state’s next chief executive will be chosen by voters or state lawmakers.
The Supreme Court took up the case on April 8. The next day, the justices formed a 4-1 majority in favor of indirect elections, but the proceedings were suspended after a judge asked for more time to consider the case. No date has been set for the case to resume.
Meanwhile, Ricardo Couto, an appeals judge and head of Rio’s Court of Justice, has become more than a temporary guardian. As acting governor, his administration has fired 1,754 public employees and opened audits of state agencies and departments.
His administration has also moved into sensitive areas. In public safety, he transferred programs previously run by other parts of the government to the Military Police. It also moved to give greater autonomy to the state’s forensic services.
The dispute over Rio’s succession has assumed national importance not only because it involves Brazil’s second-largest state economy, but also because the Supreme Court’s decision could guide future succession crises in other states.
Paulo Roberto dos Santos Corval, a law professor at Fluminense Federal University, said the judiciary’s delay in resolving the inheritance dispute has turned what should have been a transitional deal into a democratic problem.
The electorate of Rio de Janeiro passed 13 million voters in 2024giving the state the third largest voting population in Brazil.
“It is not good for the democracy of Rio de Janeiro to have a temporary governor, the president of the Court of Justice, who occupies a political position,” said Corval. “Democracy must return to society and in our constitutional system this happens through representative democracy, with the functioning of democratic institutions.”
The rotation of the election clock
Couto took office as interim governor after then-governor Cláudio Castro resigned on March 23, a day before the Supreme Electoral Court concluded a case that declared him ineligible for eight years for abusing political and economic power in the 2022 elections. Because Castro had already left office, losing his mandate was considered moot.
The resignation saw Rio’s line of succession disintegrate. The state was already without a lieutenant governor and the then Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, next in line of succession, could not assume office after being targeted by judicial and electoral decisions.
This left the government to Couto.
But the sequence between Castro’s resignation and the election court’s ruling opened another dispute: whether the governor who serves the remainder of the term should be chosen by voters or by state lawmakers.
Under the Rio Constitution, a double vacancy caused by non-electoral reasons leads to an indirect election to the Legislative Assembly. Brazil’s Electoral Code provides for direct elections when the vacancy results from an electoral court decision.
That difference led the Social Democratic Party, the party of former Rio de Janeiro mayor Eduardo Paes, a candidate for governor of the state, to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The party argues that Castro’s resignation cannot be considered in isolation because it came on the eve of an electoral decision that could change the state’s succession.
Paulo Henrique Cassimiro, a professor of political science at Rio de Janeiro State University, said the Supreme Court delay could end up narrowing the window for a special election before the regular October vote.
Some Supreme Court justices appear to be betting on the calendar, Cassimiro said.
“The strategy is to delay this decision as long as possible, so that when it is necessary to make it, the argument is that there is no time to hold two elections,” he said. “So what’s this governor supposed to do at this point? Make purely administrative decisions, which is what he’s doing.”
Cassimiro said that Couto has focused on the part of executive power that does not depend on legislators. Because the interim administration is short-lived, Couto does not need to build a base in the Legislative Assembly, pass a budget or negotiate legislative changes.
However, those decisions still have political ramifications. Cassimiro said that by removing appointed officials linked to Castro’s group, Couto was weakening the network that controlled part of the state machinery.
Alketa Peci, a professor of public administration at Fundação Getulio Vargas, said the interim administration has stood out “in an unusual way” for measures aimed at administrative cleanup and more efficient use of public resources.
Peci said a transitional administration typically has less political discretion and focuses on administrative continuity.
“But Rio de Janeiro is not a normal case. It is an ongoing case of crisis management,” Peci said.
However, Peci said the situation creates tension between the typical role of the judiciary and that of the executive branch, even when succession is formally provided for.
Corval said that telling Rio to live in perpetual chaos could reinforce the idea that society needs to be protected from its political process by an authority outside the political system.
Beyond Rio
The case could also deepen Supreme Court precedents on state succession, particularly the distinction between elective and non-elective vacancies, he said.
The court had already recognized states’ authority to regulate succession in cases involving non-electoral vacancies, as well as the application of federal law when a vacancy results from an election decision, Corval added.
But Rio’s case, he said, shows that the current project can be difficult to implement when there is a court dispute, an election year and little time to organize a new vote in a large state.
“Maybe the solutions we’ve put in place aren’t the best,” Corval said. “The fact is that we are in May without an elected governor.”
Peci said that although Rio’s case is highly unusual, the Supreme Court’s decision could set a political and institutional precedent for other states facing a double vacancy, impeachment or a dispute between direct and indirect elections.
States with weaker institutions, fragmented legislatures or a history of fiscal crises may become more vulnerable to impromptu deals in similar situations, she said.
“Rio, precisely because of the visibility and complexity of its administration, could produce a historic legal precedent on the succession, legitimacy and powers of governments in transition,” said Peci.
In a statement, Rio’s Casa Civil, the governor’s chief of staff office, said the dismissals followed internal audits of state departments, agencies and state companies. The audits found operational irregularities, including a lack of access data to government systems and a lack of formal accreditation, the office said.
According to the office, changes in strategic areas, including public safety and forensic services, followed technical and administrative criteria. The public safety changes were designed to improve the operation of those policies, the office said.
The office also said that “governance, even on an interim basis, requires responsibility and continuous action” and that Couto’s measures are based on the law, administrative transparency and the duty to keep public services functioning.
Courthouse News reporter Marília Marasciulo is in Brazil.
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