Evangelical bench annuls election of new president in unprecedented and tense dispute – 02/02/2023 – Power

This time it didn’t work: without reaching an agreement, the evangelical bench held an unprecedented vote to elect its new president. With arguments between its members and threats of judicialization, the election got nowhere and decided to postpone the election.

The electoral arm wrestling was between deputies Silas Câmara (Republicanos-AM) and Eli Borges (PL-TO).

It is the first time that the block resorts to the polls to decide who will guide it. Past elections had as a practice the acclamation of a president without the need for a vote. This has happened since the creation of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front in 2003.

Unaccustomed to holding elections, the bench suffered several problems with the voting process.

Parliamentarians who did not register on the list were able to vote — a maneuver that the internal regulations do not allow.

Deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante (PL-RJ), former president of the block that will pass the baton and responsible for conducting the election, said that there was a divergence between the number of votes and the number of parliamentarians who signed the attendance list.

“Our system, due to internet problems, has several crashes and that’s why we had problems on our list [de membros da bancada evangélica]. We had some who, because they thought the name was on the list, cast their votes. As a result, my decision was to nullify the election at that time and call a new meeting for the second half of February,” he said.

The candidate running on the outside, Eli Borges (PL-TO), did not agree with the proposal to take turns with Silas Câmara at the head of the bench. The suggestion declined: Borges would be president in 2024, and Câmara, in this first year of Lula’s (PT) government.

The way was to go to vote. Initially there were four in the race, but Otoni de Paula (MDB-RJ) and Senator Carlos Viana (Podemos-MG) withdrew from the electoral battle at the last minute.

The annulment of the vote was only defined after more than four hours of discussion. In the meantime, Otoni stated that, if the claim was not annulled, he would go to court. “The election by the Silas Câmara group is being rigged […] Don’t people say that they are believers, the paddle of the world? Corrects gays, corrects everyone, and does this dirty thing in here?”

One of the longest-lived evangelicals in the House, with the first of seven terms starting in the 20th century, Silas Câmara comes from a strong family in the northern Assembly of God. His brother Samuel Câmara leads the so-called Mother Church in Belém, the first Brazilian exponent of that denomination, founded in 1911. Jonatas Câmara, another brother, heads the Assembly of God in Amazonas.

There was an expectation of an agreement between the opponents in the 45th minute of the second half. There are precedents.

Câmara himself, when he was elected for the first time, in 2019, saw the pacification around his name sealed on the same day. Five rivals abandoned the race in his favor, including Flordelis (then PSD-RJ). Three months later, her husband would be murdered, a crime for which she ended up convicted last year.

The bloc intends to expand its spaces of power in the Chamber with the election of more conservative benches in the 2022 election.

Symbol of the strength of evangelicals, two leaders of the segment were elected to the positions of 1⁰ vice president (Marcos Pereira, from Republicanos-SP) and 2⁰ vice president (Sósthenes).

Fresh out of the presidency of the Christian group, Sóstenes even used a sticker with the face of federal deputy Maria do Rosário (PT-RS) during Wednesday (1⁰), in support of the election of the PT for the position of 2nd secretary of the Chamber. An ally of Pastor Silas Malafaia, he usually makes the PT opposition, a party to which he joined for a brief period in his youth, a point of honor.

“I use the sticker today to respect the agreement between the parties, but tomorrow I will return to the opposition and defend ideas contrary to those of this government [Lula]”, said the deputy.

Rosário, by the way, sat at the table with Sóstenes and other heads of the bench. She had already gone to a breakfast offered on Tuesday (31) by the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-PI), to evangelical parliamentarians, which upset some of them.

Marco Feliciano (PL-SP) did not forget that the PT, as Dilma Rousseff’s Human Rights Minister, did her best to prevent him from chairing the House Human Rights Commission and accused him of inciting hatred. He took office in 2013, at the suggestion of his party at the time, the PSC, which made an agreement with the PT.

Deputy Marcelo Crivella (Republicanos-RJ) told the Sheet that, without an agreement between the candidates, the understanding of the Bancada Evangélica was not to allow the vote to represent a split in the Front.

Asked if there was any regret with the fact that Universal did not have representatives at the top of the bench, Crivella replied: “Here, we follow what is in the Bible: the Father is ours, of all of us”.

Leaders from the front make appeals so that, unlike the last four years, evangelicals are more active in the House committees, to avoid the advance of agendas more to the left. Above all, it is concerned with flexibility in the right to abortion and advances in LGBTQIA+ rights.

The new government started by provoking, he told Sheet Sosthenes, the outgoing president. Gestures such as the use of the neutral pronoun (“todes”) at official events and the cleaning of the Planalto Palace with rock salt irritated. The element is linked to religions of African origin, demonized by Christian churches.

It is estimated that the bench for this legislature will have 132 deputies (26% of the Chamber) and 14 senators (17%). Evangelical congressmen like to say that they are underrepresented in both houses. The new census has not yet come out, but projections indicate that this Christian portion jumped from the 22% registered in 2010 by the IBGE to more than 30% of the population.

The current front brought together 187 deputies and 30 signatory senators. Not necessarily all are evangelicals. There are those who, even without being religious, ratify the creation of the parliamentary bloc.

The previous composition had the signature of 195 deputies, but in practice there were just over a hundred evangelical deputies. Even less so in the hard core, which attends weekly services in Congress. Almost all are right-wing, but there are exceptions, like Benedita da Silva (PT-RJ).

There are still few deputies who recognize themselves in this religion, but they do not embody the bench. Case of André Janones (Avante-MG), who refuses to join the group because he thinks that if he did, “it would be disrespectful to voters of other faiths whom I also represent”.

Debutant Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG), record holder of votes for the Chamber, is one of its new representatives. A trio of novices under investigation for allegedly encouraging the anti-democratic acts that devastated Brasília on January 8th also enter: Clarissa Tércio (PP-PE), Sílvia Waiãpi (PL-AP) and André Fernandes (PL-CE).

Son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL-SP) was present at the election.

The evangelical bench has existed since the 1980s, but it was only made official in 2003, the same year that Lula arrived at the Planalto Palace after three failed presidential incursions. The Evangelical Parliamentary Front was born “destined to ensure the rights of the Christian people”, as stated in its statute.

In 2022, Silas Câmara remembered this foundation. Some peers feared the move would sound like religious targeting, he told a bloc meeting. “No my brother, […] let’s create a seed in Brazil, that here is a servant of God.”

Senator Carlos Viana came to claim the presidency of the bench, but backtracked, recognizing that deputies have precedence in the post. He will lead the evangelicals of the Senate, a team that includes the “terribly Christian” Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF) and Magno Malta (PL-ES), who returns to the House after losing his seat in 2018 to Fabiano Contarato (PT- ES), the country’s first openly gay senator.