The congressman-elect may be a clown, but at least he can read and write.
The man who won more votes than any other candidate for Brazil’s lower house has been cleared to take his seat because a judge has ruled he can read and write well enough to act as a congressman.
Judge Aloisio Silveira ruled on Wednesday that Francisco Silva did not lie when he signed a document swearing that he is literate.
Silva, who became famous as the clown Tiririca — “Grumpy” in Portuguese — received about 1.3 million votes in elections in October.
However, critics suggested he was illiterate and Silveira ruled there were discrepancies between the handwriting on Silva’s application to run for Congress, on the document in which he swears he can read and write and in autographs he gave to fans.
Silveira ordered Silva to take a test in court proving he is literate and the judge said on his sentence that the clown passed, “despite difficulties in writing.”
Silva has attributed the discrepancies in his handwriting to the fact that his wife helped him fill out the congressional application because he has trouble holding a pen firmly between his thumb and index finger.
The judge said it doesn’t matter who filled the application as long as Silva showed a minimum capacity to read and write.
A constitutional mandate requires that federal lawmakers be literate, but the judge said it rules out only those who are “totally illiterate.”
Silva’s campaign videos drew millions of viewers on the Internet, with slogans such as “It can’t get any worse” and “What does a federal deputy do? Truly, I don’t know. But vote for me and you’ll find out.”
He belongs to the Party of the Republic, which is allied with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing