One of the candidates managed to take office as black, against the decision of the hereto-identification panel; case is sub judice

The vacancy that is being fought over at the Court of Justice of Bahia will pay R$ 10,325.34 for 30 hours of work per week, or 6 hours of working hours per day, from Monday to Friday. This is the starting remuneration for the position of State External Control Auditor of the State Court of Auditors (TCE). One candidate managed to take office on October 1st after obtaining a court injunction. The TCE is appealing.

A State External Control Auditor is responsible for coordinating, supervising and performing audit services. This professional also prepares studies, research and information of a transdisciplinary nature and issues opinions and joint reports in the legal, accounting, financial, economic, administrative, engineering, information technology and planning areas.

The position requires higher education in areas such as Administration, Accounting, Computer Science and IT, Law, Economics, Engineering, Architecture or Statistics. In August 2023, the TCE opened registrations for a competition that offered 20 places, 30% (6 places) for self-declared black or brown people. Registration closed in October of that year.

The competition was held in two stages. Candidates had to answer an objective test with 80 multiple-choice questions on Basic Knowledge and Specific Knowledge, such as external control, constitutional law, administrative law, financial and budgetary administration, government auditing, accounting applied to the public sector, general and corporate accounting, and engineering.

Afterwards, those who passed took a discursive test with two questions related to Specific and specialized Knowledge content. Both were eliminatory in nature and the registration fee was R$107.

Candidate Bruno Gonçalves Cabral, 35, took office on October 1st, but the case is sub judice. Bruno applied for one of the six places allocated to the black and brown quotas, but the competition’s hetero-identification panel denied him access, stating that he does not have the phenotype of a black person. He appealed, the panel carried out a new analysis and upheld the decision.

The candidate took the issue to court and asked for an injunction to take office, but the judge denied it until the case was judged. Bruno appealed again and presented a dermatological report stating that he has dark skin that tans easily and that he had a brown grandfather and aunt. Judge Maria do Rosário Passos da Silva Calixto evaluated the appeal and granted the injunction until the case is resolved.

When contacted, Bruno Cabral stated that he is a brown person, that the panel’s decision was wrong and that he is awaiting judgment.

“I assumed the status of a brown person, provided for in the legislation. The panel’s justifications are not sustainable when saying that I have white skin and thin, pink lips. Anyone around me clearly sees a brown person. For now, the judge agreed with the evidence presented, but the process is still ongoing. Furthermore, other people with a phenotype close to mine had their self-declaration accepted”, he stated.

Black candidates complained about him taking office. Bruno said that the panel also refused the self-declaration of a current TCE employee, in the previous year, in a different selection process, and that the body acts arbitrarily.

“This same panel identified as brown black individuals with characteristics identical to mine in the same TCE process: skin color, type of mouth and type of hair.” And he concluded. “The panel did not state that I am white, but ‘socially white’, an ideological construction of the institution, which hurts my life story even more,” he said.

In a note, the TCE informed that the competition had 20 vacancies and was valid for 90 days, and that it had the duty to call those approved during the validity of the competition. The Court highlighted that although the candidate has already taken office, the issue is sub judice, awaiting the Court’s decision.

“The Court of Auditors sent to the State Attorney General’s Office (PGE), which is responsible for carrying out the judicial defense of the interests of the State of Bahia, the subsidies and information so that the fairness of the procedure could be defended during the hetero-identification process, arguing that it followed the legal rules of the notice to try to reverse the preliminary decision”, says the note.