Amnesty PEC contradicts flags raised by the PT – 05/16/2023 – Power

The Amnesty PEC, scheduled for voting in the Chamber of Deputies this Tuesday (16), contradicts flags raised by the PT and the left, generating internal embarrassment in the party and in sectors of civil society that supported the presidential candidacy of the acronym in 2022.

Although they avoid publicly criticizing the proposal, 15 deputies, including 8 PT members, asked for their signatures to be withdrawn from the PEC. In all, there have been 17 requests since the presentation of the project, in March, 3 from black people and 1 from indigenous people. The PL made five withdrawal requests.

Among the applicants for the PT are Camila Jara (MS) and Benedita da Silva (RJ), author of the bill that extends the Law of Quotas in Universities for another 50 years. Like the other applicants, she alleges that there was a “material error” in signing the proposal. Some say they still signed without knowing what it was about, requesting withdrawal. Requests were rejected.

The PT’s support for the PEC disregards the opinion of women and blacks in Parliament, the main ones affected by electoral irregularities committed by the parties, and civil entities. They say the project undermines efforts made in recent years to include underrepresented groups in politics and reinforces impunity.

By law, each party must allocate at least 30% of the electoral fund’s budget to female candidates, in addition to an amount proportional to the number of black candidates it launches. PEC 09/2023 extends pardon to parties that did not meet these quotas for the past election and exempts them from sanctions of any kind.

The mobilization in favor of the amnesty, considered the largest in history, includes government and opposition and has the signature of 13 party associations, including the PL and the federation led by the PT.

Of 17 black federal deputies and deputies wanted by the Sheet, 9 said they were against the PEC. One deputy said he had no opinion and the others did not respond.

Despite this, the majority tends to vote as a block with their parties this Tuesday, in favor of the PEC. A group led by women and blacks from the PT tries to articulate a release for them to vote independently.

If they need to give in in favor of their party’s position, the group proposes as a condition that more parameters be created for the allocation of funds according to gender and race criteria in the next elections.

This is because the author of the PEC, Deputy Paulo Magalhães (PSD-BA), argues that the party leaderships had difficulty adapting to the new obligations “due to the inexistence of another rule that presented the goals or a greater elucidation on the matter pertinent to the distribution of said quotas”.

The project discussed in Congress also allows parties to receive corporate money again to settle debts with suppliers contracted until August 2015, making them impunity if any irregularity is identified.

For Congresswoman Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP), the PEC is unconstitutional. “It makes fun of all important legislation to guarantee equity and gender and racial parity in electoral disputes and in political parties. equalization,” he says.

The party, an ally of Lula since the election campaign, has articulated obstructions in the CCJ (Commission for the Constitution of Justice), presenting requirements for the vote to be dropped from the agenda. As a result, the vote scheduled for April 25 was postponed to the 26th, when it was rescheduled again.

“If the PEC is approved, we will completely lose credibility in the laws. We will realize that in fact there is no commitment to make equal the inequalities that exist in institutional policy and reflect in other spheres of society, not just in the politics,” adds Hilton.

The president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, has been positioning herself in favor of the Amnesty PEC. She has appeared in party advertisements on television and radio in which she claims that “the PT advocates more policies for women and more women in politics”.

Gleisi defended that the PEC be discussed by the deputies on April 25, when its vote was scheduled, citing the need for “an open and frank debate” on the subject, contrary to deputies who want compliance with the current legislation and try to postpone it to convince allies to vote against the proposal.

Civil society entities have also mobilized against the amnesty proposal. In April, more than 50 organizations and movements sent a letter to the Superior Electoral Court, in which they claim that the PEC extinguishes the effectiveness of judgments carried out by the Electoral Justice and empties its inspection power.

For Jefferson Nascimento, coordinator of social and economic justice at Oxfam Brasil, signatory of the document, measures such as the obligation to allocate funds to underrepresented groups exercise educational action and contribute to the reduction of disparities.

“The PEC would bring a very negative signal, in the sense that even these small advances granted, in relation to more representation of women and black people in politics, have been undermined by Congress itself”, he says.

Frei David Santos, executive director of Educafro, proposes not only that the PEC be rejected, but also that fines collected from parties that disrespected the minimum transfer of funds to women and blacks be reverted to the benefit of these segments in future elections.

Although it does not need presidential sanction to enter into force, the PEC contradicts flags adopted by Lula. In January, after receiving the presidential sash from the “Brazilian people” —symbolized by the figures of a black child, an indigenous man, a black woman, a worker and a person with a disability—, the president addressed minority groups during his inauguration speech in the National Congress.

The petista said it was “inadmissible that women are not recognized in a sexist political world”, that “blacks and browns continue to be the poor and oppressed majority of a country built with the sweat and blood of their ancestors”, and promised to “revoke all injustices committed against indigenous peoples”.

Elected, the president created the Ministries of Women, Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and Citizenship and Racial Equality, in line with his campaign promises.

The president, however, has been reluctant to nominate a black woman to the Federal Supreme Court for the vacancy opened with the retirement of Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, which took place in April.