Nunes Marques clears Deltan Dallagnol to win Paraná Senate seat

What happened in the Paraná Senate race?

The president of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Kassio Nunes Marques, cleared the way for former anti-corruption prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol to win a seat in the Senate, suspending a last-minute ruling that had disqualified him just hours before the vote.

The decision, delivered on Sunday morning as voting began, meant that ballots cast for Dallagnol were counted and processed normally. By Sunday evening, with 94.06% of the state's polling stations reporting, Dallagnol, running for the Novo party, had secured second place in Paraná with 25.31% of the vote. That result is enough to win him one of the state's two available Senate seats, finishing behind Filipe Barros of the Liberal Party, who led with 27.29%.

However, his victory remains provisional. The full bench of the TSE must still make a final ruling on whether Dallagnol was legally eligible to run.

Why did Nunes Marques intervene?

The legal drama peaked on Saturday night, when TSE Minister Floriano de Azevedo Marques acted individually to overturn a local court's decision, disqualifying Dallagnol and declaring any votes cast for him null.

Hours later, at 11:06 pm on Saturday, Dallagnol's coalition filed an urgent appeal. Nunes Marques, as court president, intervened on Sunday morning to block his colleague's ruling.

Nunes Marques argued that such a significant decision should never have been made by a single judge so close to polling. He stated that the court's rules reserve final decisions on a candidate's status for the full collective bench, rather than individual ministers.

"The collective bench is the ordinary way the court expresses itself," Nunes Marques wrote in his decision. He added that the late ruling risked throwing the election into technical chaos, as it was impossible to inform voters in time that their ballots would be discarded. This, he warned, could undermine public trust and trigger endless legal challenges over the count.

What is Dallagnol's political history?

Dallagnol rose to national prominence as the lead federal prosecutor in the massive "Lava Jato" (Car Wash) anti-corruption investigation based in Curitiba. Working alongside then-judge Sergio Moro, he spearheaded inquiries into systemic bribery involving state oil firm Petrobras, major construction firms, and political figures.

In 2022, Dallagnol left the public prosecutor's office to enter politics. He was elected as a federal deputy for Paraná with 344,917 votes, making him the most popular congressional candidate in the state.

His legislative career was short-lived. In 2023, the TSE unanimously stripped him of his seat, ruling that he had violated the country's Clean Slate Law by resigning from the federal prosecutor's office while still facing internal administrative inquiries that could have led to his dismissal.

What happens next?

The TSE plenary must still decide whether to approve or reject Dallagnol's candidacy.

In September, Paraná's regional electoral court approved his registration by a narrow 4-3 vote, a decision that led to the appeals now before the federal court in Brasília.

If the full TSE bench eventually upholds his registration, his Senate victory will be fully confirmed, allowing him to take office in 2027. If the judges vote to disqualify him, his votes will be permanently annulled, and the state's election results will have to be recalculated.

In a statement, Dallagnol's defence team called the Saturday disqualification "illegal" and welcomed the intervention by Nunes Marques, confirming that Dallagnol's status on the electoral court's official systems had been restored to "approved with appeal".