By LUIS FELIPE MIGUEL*

Corrupt Congress grows in the face of an apathetic government

1.

Yesterday's defeat confirmed, in a clear manner, what we already knew. The axis of power has changed in Brazil. The presidency of the Republic is weakened and we are immersed in a parliamentary system. sui generis, in which Congress gives orders but does not take responsibility. It is the worst of all worlds.

Lula and the PT always operated under the premise that the presidency was all that mattered. Brazilian politics was like Quidditch, the game from the Harry Potter books, where teams can score as many points as they want, but the winner is the one who catches the Golden Snitch.

The Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, and state governments had no weight in the eyes of the presidency. That's why the PT members formed coalitions with any party, giving votes to expand their benches, and ceded governments to the Sérgio Cabrais of the world, as long as they guaranteed the election of the president.

This has changed, it is clear that it has changed, it is not new – it dates back to Dilma Rousseff's second term and was deepened under Jair Bolsonaro. But Lula and the PT remain disoriented.

The gangsters who led the defeat of the three decrees on the IOF, Hugo Motta and Davi Alcolumbre, came to their positions with the support of the government. However, they are ready to make this same government unviable, without caring about the consequences for the country.

Davi Alcolumbre later gave an interview saying that the members of parliament “have been helping Lula for two and a half years.” And that the problem was that the IOF decree “started badly” and “was quickly rejected by Brazilian society.” A lesson in cynicism.

Rentism is not “Brazilian society”. The R$197 billion in tax incentives that consumers will pay for electricity are certainly rejected by Brazilian society, which did not prevent Congress from overturning the presidential vetoes (including the votes of the vast majority of the PT). A measure with the implications of the IOF increase is not discarded without discussion and negotiation, as happened now. Congress does not help the government, much less does it help society: it harasses the government and turns its back on the people.

2.

This is not “political polarization,” which occurs when the opposition tries to block the president’s actions in order to wear him down, as the Republicans tried to do with Joe Biden, for example. Here, the case is different. Congress, that is, the Centrão, which is its backbone, simply wants to ensure its dominance. It wants to control the money and not suffer the consequences of its own decisions.

Of course, cutting a tax increase that would hit the top of the pyramid satisfies the sponsors of our illustrious representatives. The possibility of using the “fiscal imbalance” to to change the constitutional floor of Education and Health It's another bonus. But the retaliation really came because the Lula government had the audacity to hold the parliamentarians responsible for the decision they themselves made, regarding the electricity bill.

How will the government react? From what we read in the press, it won't even react.

Although the decision is probably unconstitutional, since the decree was related to a clear attribution of the Executive, the Planalto is reluctant to take the issue to the Supreme Court. It does not want to “worsen the relationship with the Legislative Branch” and does not want to offend Hugo Motta and Davi Alcolumbre.

It is a government that takes hits and does not react, that is always waiting for good faith, understanding, compliance with agreements, who knows, the civic sense of the Centrão.

Should we fire the ministers from the right-wing parties who voted virtually unanimously against the government? Certainly not.

In the Chamber of Deputies, the PP, from the Ministry of Sports, voted unanimously to overturn the decrees. In União Brasil, from the Ministry of Tourism, the vote was 97% – two deputies did not register their votes. The same thing happened in the Republicans, from the Ministry of Ports, where the rate reached 95%; in the MDB, from the Ministries of Cities, Transportation and Planning, it was 93%.

In the PSD, which controls the Mining and Energy, Agriculture and Fisheries sectors, the percentage against the government was lower, at 60% (still a majority). The same score was for the PSB, which has the vice-presidency and the ministries of Industry and Commerce and Entrepreneurship. In the PDT, which controls the ministries of Regional Development and Social Security, maintaining the latter even after the scandal that undermined the government, 94% of the deputies voted to overturn the decrees (only one did not vote).

Ministers can rest assured. The position is theirs, it doesn't matter if they don't deliver anything to the government, neither in political support nor in management capacity.

Lula insists on courting the parliamentary elite – or perhaps the correct term is scum – although it is already more than clear that he will not receive any kind of commitment or loyalty in return. He opened the taps to release parliamentary amendments in the last few days and the result is what we saw.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to adopt a more confrontational strategy. Demand something in return for what is given. Dismiss people from public positions, cut the release of funds. Make sure that there is some burden in betraying agreements with the government.

3.

Why doesn't Lula call a radio and television network to explain to the Brazilian people what is happening, to explain the political meaning of taxation on the richest and to hold Congress responsible for its part in his paralysis?

But of course he won't do that. All he does is give in more, even without any results. And each time he gives in he weakens himself more and more.

Lula 3 is Dilma 2. He devalues ​​his resources by handing them over for nothing.

The government has no direction. It has failed to accomplish almost anything of the little it set out to do, under the particularly challenging conditions in which it took office. And, as Seneca said, “there is no favorable wind for those who do not know where they are going.”

What is Lula afraid of? Of suffering a impeachment? The gentlemen in Congress do not seem very interested in this solution. For them, it is more interesting to have a government on the ropes, assuming the wear and tear and handing everything over to them.

And Lula wants to drag himself along for another year and a half, as a president who does not preside, who does not even fight with the resources that the position still gives him, to then, with luck, be reelected and we have another four years of this martyrdom? Is this the plan?

The government's paralysis is partly the result of the legislative branch's capture of the budget. Partly, it is the result of the heterogeneity of the coalition that the president is trying to lead. Partly, it is the result of the lack of preparation of many managers, who were put in office to satisfy pressure from groups or to symbolize identity-based visibility.

But the political paralysis is unequivocally the responsibility of Lula and the leadership of his government.

Forgive me, unconditional Lula supporters: the president we elected in 2022 (and who, everything indicates, we will have to fight to be reelected next year) is not up to the task of this historic moment.

The situation we are experiencing is described in scientific vocabulary with the expression “in the woods without a dog”.

A part of Brazilian political science insists on saying that everything is going well, very well. Jair Bolsonaro’s term in office, some say, was proof of the “resilience” of our institutions. Even a serious researcher like Fernando Limongi has publicly complained that “there is a tendency to disrespect the Legislature as an expression of society.” According to him, “our system allows, through Congress, for society to be heard.”

It is the formalism that equates voting with representation. Yes, everyone in parliament was elected. But this does not prevent elected officials from distancing themselves from voters, from expressing very little of the interests of the base, from manipulating them, from serving only their own interests. lobbies powerful and their own appetites.

The system is working, yes, but to ensure the continuation of this state of affairs – an unequal and backward society, a population deprived of power, a façade democracy in which the will of the majority can be ignored with impunity. The destruction of the presidential system was the final straw for the hope of change from within.

As Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos elegantly wrote, shortly after the 2016 coup accelerated this process, the project is to build an “order of naked domination with conciliatory purposes towards the dominated segments”.

And the Brazilian people watch in a stupefaction (to use the immortal expression of Aristides Lobo)) to yet another chapter in the downfall of his country, drugged by fake news, bets, social networks, churches, entrepreneurship, the devil and all.

A weak Executive, a corrupt Legislative, a negotiating Judiciary, a coup-plotting Armed Forces, a predatory ruling class. A large part of the small left is involved in secondary squabbles, incapable of defining priorities, or else excited by the crumbs of power, by the positions that are left to them. It is difficult to foresee any solution within the institutions. It is difficult to see any way out that does not involve a revolution.

Of course, just as today’s coups can do without uniformed protagonists and tanks in the streets, the revolution I’m talking about doesn’t need to involve a storming of the Winter Palace. But a transformation is necessary.”revolutionary"of the historical pattern of the Brazilian State's relationship with the elites and the popular classes. A transformation that is implausible in the current context, in which the systems of checks and balances serve, in practice, to curb any challenge to the hoarding of power by the minority that holds it.

We need a revolution, but there is no one to do it. This, in a nutshell, is the drama of Brazil today.

* Luis Felipe Miguel He is a professor at the Institute of Political Science at UnB. Author, among other books, of Democracy in the capitalist periphery: impasses in Brazil (authentic). [https://amzn.to/45NRwS2].

Originally published in Tomorrow doesn't exist yet.

the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE