Chamber imposes defeats on the government and weakens Minister Alexandre Padilha

The mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), increased the pressure against president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and imposed this Wednesday (3) a new defeat on the Planalto Palace through the approval of the legislative decree (PDL) that suspends part of the PT’s decrees that changed the legal framework for basic sanitation. The movement increases the pressure against the Minister of Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha, responsible for articulating the Executive with the National Congress.

The PDL on sanitation decrees was included on the voting agenda after a meeting of Centrão leaders. The parliamentarians’ assessment is that the government ignored requests made by Lira for the Executive to withdraw from the changes.

Lira even scheduled a team of parliamentarians to negotiate with Minister Alexandre Padilha and other members of the Planalto. According to deputy Fernando Monteiro (PP-PE), chosen to monitor the negotiations, Lira decided to guide his PDL to stop the decrees due to lack of response on the part of Padilha and the ministers of the Civil House, Rui Costa, and of the Cities, Jader Filho .

The PDL was approved by the plenary of the Chamber by a score of 295 votes against 136. Before being voted on, the PT, PCdoB and PV federation tried to postpone the appreciation of the text for one session, but it was unsuccessful.

After the defeat, the leader of the government in the House, deputy José Guimarães (PT-CE) recognized the difficulties of the Planalto in consolidating the support base in the Legislative. For Guimarães, it is necessary to “put a brake on tidying up”. “The leaders who sent against the government will have to decide whether or not they are the government. Life goes on”, he argued. União Brasil, MDB and PSD, which lead ministries, voted mostly in favor of the PDL, that is, against the interests of the government.

Leader of the opposition, federal deputy Carlos Jordy (PL-RJ) said in the session that the government saw that its base “melted”. “It’s a fragile foundation. Yesterday [terça-feira, 2] we had already seen it [no adiamento da votação do PL das fake news]. Today we are doing justice to the Parliament that passed one of the greatest legal milestones in history,” he said.

The approval by the deputies, however, is seen as a “harsh message” of dissatisfaction with the government’s attitude, according to the parliamentarians. Now the PDL still needs to go through the Federal Senate to actually be valid and suspend Lula’s decrees.

Distribution of amendments increases pressure against Padilha

In addition to the lightning vote of the PDL against Lula’s decree, the postponement of the vote on the fake news PL and the distribution of parliamentary amendments in recent days have increased the pressure on the Minister of Institutional Relations. Centrão leaders and the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), have been complaining behind the scenes about the articulation of the Lula government.

The assessment of the parliamentarians is that Alexandre Padilha has been accumulating functions within the articulation of the government and has not given vent to the demands of the Chamber. In addition, deputies have complained about the delay in releasing the amendments that had already been negotiated during the management of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Last Sunday (30), in an interview with the newspaper The globe, Lira stated that Lula’s minister “has had difficulties” in meeting the needs of the allied base. The president of the Chamber is part of the so-called “superbloco” of the Chamber, formed by 173 deputies from the PP, União Brasil, PDT, PSB, Solidariedade, Avante, Patriota and the Citizenship-PSDB federation.

Behind the scenes, leaders of these parties admit that there is “dissatisfaction” with the deliveries made by Padilha so far. The assessment around Lira is that the minister’s articulation ended up increasing the resistance of parliamentarians to the text of the Fake News PL, which without agreement for approval ended up being postponed by the mayor.

To try to get around the crisis, President Lula met on Tuesday (2) with the President of the Chamber in a meeting outside the official agenda at Palácio da Alvorada. After the meeting, Lula received some ministers from the political core, among them Alexandre Padilha (Institutional Relations) and Rui Costa (Casa Civil). Also present were government leaders in the Senate and Chamber, respectively Jaques Wagner (PT-BA) and José Guimarães (PT-CE).

Lula releases amendments after defeats in the Chamber of Deputies

Planalto advisers admit that Lula heard from Lira the deputies’ complaints about the government’s articulation and promised to act to assist the parliamentarians. The president of the Chamber warned the PT that the amendments promised in the approval of the PEC of the Transition, at the end of last year, had not yet been released.

After the meeting, Lula determined that the amendments be paid and that the agreement should be fulfilled. Last year’s amendments total BRL 6.5 billion for the Chamber and BRL 3.5 billion for the Senate. Asked about the meeting with Lira, Lula said that the conversation was “good”. “Every conversation I have is always very good,” he said during an appointment at the Itamaraty.

In addition, Padilha’s portfolio began releasing this Thursday (4) amendments to the 2023 Budget. The expectation is that R$ 1.6 billion will be released from the so-called tax amendments. The resources will come from agreements between the Ministry of Health and the municipalities indicated by parliamentarians to carry out works or fund services.

Before guiding the PDL against Lula’s decrees in the Chamber, Lira said, in an interview with GloboNews, that the government has problems with political articulation and that he had a frank and clear conversation with Lula about this. “A conversation between the President of the Republic and the President of the Chamber is never bad, it is always good for the country,” she said.

Government members assess that, from now on, the flow of release of amendments should “improve”. Planalto’s expectation is to pave the way for support within Lira’s “superbloco”, which has nine parties and 173 deputies, and within the alliance formed by the Republicans with the PSD, MDB, Podemos and PSC, which has 142 parliamentarians and will be the second greater strength of the Chamber.

Petistas defend keeping Padilha in the government articulation

Behind the scenes, PT members assess that Lira has increased the complaints against Padilha as a way of claiming more space for his allies within the government. In the newspaper interview The globethe president of the Chamber defended what he called a “decentralization” of the PT government.

“A fellow [Padilha] fine and polite, but who has had difficulties. It has not been reflected in a good satisfaction ratio. Maybe the class needs to decentralize more, trust more. If you centralize it, it holds a lot. There is a lot of difficulty, perhaps due to the time that the PT has been out of power,” said Lira.

For PT leaders, however, Lira’s complaint is due to the loss of power in releasing amendments to the secret budget. The government supporters’ assessment is that the end of the mechanism reflected in Lira’s power over the vote of deputies from various Centrão parties.

Despite the prohibition of the secret budget by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the Lula government created a new mechanism based on resources from ministries that benefit parliamentarians from the Chamber and the Senate. Currently, these negotiations and releases are centered on Alexandre Padilha.

The resources that can be distributed by the Lula government, with the objective of obtaining political support, reach the level of R$ 46 billion this year. They are divided between granting individual amendments to parliamentarians and amendments by ministries, which already existed and are called by technical jargon RP2. The old version of the secret budget was operationalized through rapporteur amendments that became known by the technical jargon of RP9.

Government leader in the Chamber and close to Lira, deputy José Guimarães has minimized criticism against Padilha. According to the PT, the charge is due to the government’s slowness in meeting the demands of parliamentarians, but he considered that this slowness is not Padilha’s fault, but the “political framework”.