For
George Castro
International Analyst
Lula assumed the presidency of Brazil ten days before his constitutional due, due to Bolsonaro’s complete absence in the 50 days following his October 30 defeat created a notorious power vacuum which led the president-elect to negotiate directly with Congress the terms of the fiscal and budgetary conditions of his government, in the so-called constitutional amendment 2023 (PEC/23), effectively assuming and through his evident capacity for political initiative the first judiciary of the nation
Along the way, and through the vote of Minister Ricardo Lewandowski of the Superior Federal Court (STF), appointed by Lula in 2009, managed to declare the dominated “secret budget” “unconstitutional”. with funds of R $ 19,400 million and which remains at the discretion of deputies and senators to make expenditures and investments in their respective districts.
Lula maneuver via Lewandowski took the Congress of Brasilia by surprisecontrolled in more than 2/3 and in both chambers by Bolsonarismo, a right- and center-right coalition that has become the main political force in Brazil, after having prevailed in the three main states: São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de janeiro.
The response of Congress, led by its president Arthur Lira It arrived quickly and with a decisive character: divided the “secret budget”, just eliminated by the STF, in 2, and half (R$ 9.7 billion) was incorporated directly into the “individual amendments” distributed among deputies (513) and senators (81 ), which are enforceable by the Executive, and which then doubled to R$ 21.4 billion, while the other half corresponded to the Lula government, but with the particularity that it must allocate them “as proposed by the General Rapporteur” , which is a deputy acting on the advice of his colleagues in the Senate and House, and who do not need to identify themselves.
In short, the countermeasure of Bolsonaro’s Congress In 3 days he managed to make the “secret budget”, declared unconstitutional by the Federal Superior Court, reappear alive and well in the new PEC/23 voted by both Chambers: marvels of the “Brazilian jeitinho” that has become a great lawmaker. Similarly, Congress has decided to reduce PEC/23 from 4 years of validity, as Lula wanted, to a period of only 12 months, which means that in December 2023 it will face a new Congress more right-facing, because 238 deputies finish their mandate e they will be replaced by more convinced supporters of Bolsonaropresumably with greater budgetary needs.
The Brazilian political system is the union of two republics: the Parliamentarian, which is the fundamental one, and which reflects the deeply diversified reality of Brazil, a country born as a Confederation and then became a Federation with a tenuous central political power, which practically completely controls the Union’s budget expenditure.
Of that Parliamentary Republic a Presidential Republic superimposedwhich later became a plebiscite as a result of the double circuit regime, and structurally subordinate to the first.
In the event of a conflict, the Parliamentary Republic revealed a infamous ability to depose presidents and has done it twice in the last 30 years (Collor de Mello and Dilma Rousseff).
Finally, the Brazilian electoral system does it none of the political parties can acquire more than 20% of the seatswhich implies that in order to govern the federal power it must necessarily agree with that multiplicity of small protagonists, whose identity is neither ideological nor doctrinal, but exclusively “physiological”, and who it is defined by its greater or lesser proximity to the national budgetwhich for them becomes synonymous with truth.
Here because in Brazil there is little room for the emergence of plebiscitary leaderships of pasta; and the best known experience of this definition, which was Getulio Vargas, ended with his suicide in the Palacio de Catete, in Rio de Janeiro, on August 24, 1954.
Lula he legitimately won on October 30 in the second round, but did so with the smallest difference in Brazilian history since the resumption of democracy in 1985 (1.8 million votes in an electoral universe of 158 million voters). Which means that he got 59.5 million votes (50.83%) and Bolsonaro got almost 58 million votes (49.1% of the total): practically half of Brazil supported him; and between the first and second rounds, the former parachute captain increased his yield by 7 million voters.
Bolsonarism politically he is much more important than Bolsonaro; and since Brazil is a presidential system only incidentally, Lula’s notorious charisma will have to adapt in his third presidential term to the logic of the system.
The situation in Brazil it is open in the next four years. This is the first and fundamental conclusion.
Source: Clarin
