By CARLOS VAINER*
By interrupting the process of creating IBGE+ and the entrepreneurship of IBGE, the federal government did not retreat; on the contrary, it took an important step forward.
In November of last year, I expressed my opposition to the creation of IBGE+. At the time, I read all the available documentation (official notes, manifestos, legal opinions, etc.) and spoke with several employees of the agency. In a small restaurant in Catete, during a meeting with Marcio Pochman, we were able to have a rich and respectful exchange of ideas, which helped to clarify some of the few agreements and many differences.
As the controversy continues, I decided to return to the topic.
First of all, I think that the discussion about the conflict in and about the IBGE should be conducted with a view to the type of republican and democratic State that we want. Often, unfortunately increasingly, instead of debating ideas, we see contenders using arguments ad hominem. Now, this is not about discussing Marcio Pochman's biography, his engagement, what he did, what he wrote and what he has said about Brazilian reality.
Personally, I respect him, I agree with some of his ideas and disagree with many others. I also respect ASSIBGE, having participated in the demonstration it organized a few years ago, outside the IBGE headquarters in Rio, against the suspension of the Census by Jair Bolsonaro. However, that is not what is at issue now, nor what we should put at the center of the discussion.
It makes no sense to shift the debate to accusations against FIBGE employees (let us remember that this institution is already a foundation) who are this or that. After all, I think that no one would disagree that the vast majority of IBGE employees are dedicated, committed and qualified technicians, selected through public competitions. I also believe that there is general agreement that conflicts over work regimes and workplaces are normal union/corporate issues, which all public managers and administrators deal with and should know how to deal with.
A government that can negotiate with abject characters in our political life and with military personnel whose commitment to democracy is, at the very least, dubious, certainly cannot be incapable of talking and negotiating with public servants.
For my part, I clarify, I am totally in favor, with very rare exceptions, of the in-person work regime, because only it engenders relationships of interaction and cooperation that are impossible in “home office” regimes, even favoring dialogue and mutual knowledge that is the very condition of the organization of workers in the workplace (can anyone imagine organizing the student movement in a distance university? Does anyone think it is possible to organize significant collective struggles and demonstrations without in-person work?).
On the other hand, I cannot understand the intention of prohibiting civil servants from proudly displaying the name of the public institution they serve in their union title, as is the case with countless unions and associations of university teachers and civil servants, BNDES, Petrobrás, etc.
I am convinced, I insist, that the central theme of the debate should be another: how to (re)build a republican and democratic state and public service? What we should discuss is whether the lack of public resources in agencies as important as FIBGE should lead us to: (i) find “ways” to finance them; (ii) make raising funds in the market the best “way” to fill the financial gaps resulting from the budgetary constraints, which in turn result from the so-called “fiscal austerity” policies.
During the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the then Minister of Education Abraham Weintraub launched the “Future-se” program, which, in short, told federal universities that they should “get by” and seek resources in the market, since public resources were and would continue to be scarce. Some universities have taken this path, such as UFRJ, which is liquidating part of its real estate assets and handed over 15.000 m2 from the Praia Vermelha campus to a private concert company.
A few years ago, Fernando Haddad, as Minister of Education, promoted the entrepreneurship of university hospitals, with the creation of EBSERH – Brazilian Company of Hospital Services. Citing the lack of resources and management difficulties, he struck at university autonomy, deepened the CLTization of public universities and intensified the process of erosion of the public sense and the commitment of university hospitals to teaching, research and extension… after all, companies, even when public, have a vocation, objective and modus operandi distinct from universities and other public bodies.
Just recently, the Bonsucesso Federal Hospital in Rio de Janeiro was outsourced, with its management handed over to the Conceição Hospital Group, a public company under private law (like EBSERH), in a regrettable tacit acceptance of the neoliberal mantra that companies are more “effective” than direct administration in managing public services.
Poor management and, above all, the lack of resources promoted in the name of adjustments and fiscal responsibilities, the suffocation and scrapping of companies and bodies, have always been part of the strategies to destroy the public sector and hand it over to companies.
The processes of state entrepreneurship and privatization operate in multiple ways. Typically, the privatization of state-owned companies is what attracts the most attention. Although more insidious and not always visible, there is another mechanism, which we could call “white entrepreneurship,” which takes place through the penetration of business concepts, visions, and practices into the state apparatus. Business planning models are adopted, and the managerialism and competitiveness typical of private companies are adhered to.
As if private companies operating in competitive markets constituted universal and virtuous models to be adopted in all social institutions – whether governmental or non-governmental organizations. To cite just one example: academic entrepreneurship and competitiveness are increasingly encouraged, and even imposed, on universities, professors and researchers, who must compete to occupy prominent positions in rankings of this and that.
Another example: public companies are expected to make high profits, as if their main, if not only, purpose were, as in private companies, to make a profit, rather than to meet some public need – that is, social, collective.
On November 6, 11, the decision of the plenary of the STF that rejected Direct Action of Unconstitutionality 2024, filed in 2135 by the PT, PCdoB and PSB against PEC 2000/19 – Administrative Reform by Bresser Pereira during the FHC government, went almost unnoticed. Among other things, the constitutional amendment eliminated (and, now validated by the STF, eliminated) the requirement that public servants be governed by the Single Legal Regime, an achievement of the 1998 Constitution that ended the coexistence of different work regimes in the public service.
I have not heard that the PT, the PCdoB, the PSB or the Ministry of Management and Innovation have protested against, or at least lamented, this defeat of the constitutionality of the Single Legal Regime. In other words: they watched silently (with satisfaction?) yet another victory of the neoliberal managerial state concept carried out by the reform of the FHC-Bresser Pereira duo that they fought against in 2000. (Note: This reform was much broader than the end of the Single Legal Regime and it would not be possible to discuss it in all its perverse consequences here).
In fact, the attack on the public nature of public services and the Single Legal Regime did not wait for the STF's decision, since the CLT had already been advancing in several areas, with multiple and differentiated outsourcing processes – health centers, hospitals, services within public institutions themselves and, more recently, increasingly, in several states, education.
But let us return to the IBGE. Created in 1936, two years before the creation of the DASP, which would implement mandatory public examinations for public office (cf. Articles 170 and 156, respectively, in the 1934 and 1937 constitutions), the IBGE has spent its 90 years of existence providing enormous services to the State and Brazilian society. At various times, it has faced financial and technical difficulties, pressured by mayors against census results, and politically harassed by those who have always seen the State and the public sector as enemies to be defeated, distributing the spoils in order to serve private interests.
And also, of course, by those for whom occupying public positions without a public exam is the way to feed patronage-client networks, in which relevant portions of our “political class” enrich themselves, reproducing private appropriations of the public machine and notoriously perverse relations between the executive and legislative powers.
The argument used by the FIBGE board is not new: there is a lack of resources. We see the same old story being repeated: the agency or company that is the target of the moment is financially suffocated, services are scrapped, working conditions are precarious… and the solution is privatization, or, as in the case of Abraham Weintraub’s Future-se and now FIBGE: seek resources in the market. I do not mean to say or suggest that the suffocation of the IBGE began under the management of Marcio Pochman and under the Lula government, but rather that the dismantling inherited from Michel Temer-Jair Bolsonaro cannot be overcome with the playbook of those who advocate fiscal austerity and the shrinking of the public sector.
I think that instead of defending and attacking Marcio Pochman or the IBGE union, we should unite, scientific associations and civil society, together with the agency's directors and employees, to demand that the federal government, the Ministry of Planning, Public Management and Innovation and the Ministry of Finance ensure public budgetary resources so that FIBGE can fulfill its functions. It is known that resources are abundant. The payment of the public debt (interest and amortization) swallowed up R$ 2024 trillion in 2,5 (45% of the total budget); not to mention subsidies and exemptions to capital, which reached R$ 544 billion (The Globe, 13/10/2024).
By interrupting the process of creating IBGE+ and the IBGE's business model, the federal government did not back down; on the contrary, it took an important step forward. And we should welcome this decision. It is now time to take the second step and provide the agency with the budgetary resources it needs to ensure and improve its public character and technical excellence.
*Carlos Vainer He is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Urban and Regional Research and Planning at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
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