Evangelical bench splits due to fear of proximity to Lula – 07/17/2023 – Politics

The evangelical bench is under new management and an old dilemma. Deputy Silas Câmara (Republicanos-AM) will assume his presidency on the return of the parliamentary recess. The changing of the guard with the current leader, Eli Borges (PL-TO), has aroused in the backstage fear that the future management will be too cordial with the Lula government (PT) for the Bolsonarist brio of some members of the front.

The internal split emerged after an adviser to the bloc sent a message to journalists saying that the evangelical parliamentarians made official an agreement for Borges and Câmara to take turns in charge until the end of 2024, alternating six months of term for each one.

The caveat is what drew attention: “However, the bench does not feel comfortable with the new presidency and [em] like the dept. Silas is waving to President Lula’s government”.

The two deputies fought a heated dispute over the post in February, with accusations of fraud and threats of judicialization. They managed to pacify the election after sealing the arrangement that Borges would preside over the bench in the first half of 2023, and Câmara in the second, repeating the agreement the following year.

Borges is from the party of Jair Bolsonaro, to whom the religious group strongly aligned in the election. The expectation is that the new leadership will reduce friction with the PT administration, with the obvious exception of the customs agenda.

Silas Câmara is described by peers as an old fox in Congress, more accustomed to the central way of acting. In other words, willing to adopt a conciliatory posture with whatever government it may be. He belongs to the Câmara family, an evangelical lighthouse in the north of the country. His brother Samuel is pastor of the first Brazilian Assembly of God, called Mother Church.

In the seventh term, he already headed the bench, between 2019 and 2020, Bolsonaro’s first two years in power. Those were times of glory for the front, which experienced unprecedented proximity to the Planalto Palace, which included prayers with the president and the blocking of agendas contrary to his interest. The apex was the nomination of the Presbyterian pastor André Mendonça to the STF (Federal Supreme Court), with active lobbying by evangelicals.

A Sheet Câmara says that the relationship of the FPE (Frente Parlamentar Evangélica) with the government will be “republican, respectful and of dialogue with all”, but “intransigent in the themes for which [a bancada] exists”. There would be no negotiation possible, for example, to make abortion more flexible in Brazil.

His priority would therefore be “to strengthen our position in everything that FPE already does in defense of the principles that guide our faith”.

Another former president of the group and seen as an ally of Câmara, Cezinha de Madureira (PSD-SP) joins the wing of those who see no sense in clashing with Planalto just to mark territory as an opposition.

He remembers a passage from the biblical book of Romans, about all authority being constituted by God, much evoked in the segment to defend an affable relationship with rulers. “A deputy who is worried about an approximation with any government”, he says, makes “unintelligent opposition”.

“The evangelical public elects [representantes] to protect their ideologies. You don’t have to be worried about whether the government is red, yellow, blue. It doesn’t matter. The role of the parliamentarian is to have dialogue.”

Cezinha is linked to the Assembly of God Madureira, one of the first large churches to be open to reestablishing bridges with Lula after four years of intense relationship with Bolsonarism.

He has already climbed on Bolsonaro’s back, on one of the motorcycles that the then president, seeking re-election, undertook in the campaign. He went so far as to say, after the PT triumph: “Everyone knows that Lula was elected there with a very difficult agenda with the evangelicals”.

But now are other times. Cezinha recalls that she was even beside Jorge Messias, a deacon of the Baptist Church, when the Union’s attorney general was booed on the stage of the Marcha para Jesus. It happened when he announced that he would speak on behalf of Lula at the event.

The deputy claims to see “no threat” to the Christian agenda on the horizon. “What exists is a government that wants to demonstrate that it respects us. I supported Bolsonaro, but I have a duty, in the midst of this unintelligent war, to try to keep the peace.”

Like him, the majority of the bench, which amounts to around a fifth of the 513 federal deputies, would be responsible for their churches. The rest, he says without naming names, are “sealing deputies”.

Those most likely to talk articulated in two neuralgic chapters of this beginning of the Lula government. First it was in the Fake News PL, when the bill was not yet paralyzed in Congress.

Religious deputies saw the text as harmful to religious freedom. This group acted to remove excerpts that could be misinterpreted by evangelicals, and the PL gained a new version citing “free exercise of expression and religious cults” and “full exposure of its dogmas and sacred books”.

Another portion of evangelical parliamentarians remained adamant in their opposition to the proposal.

Days ago, a new wording of Tax Reform extended immunity for temples. The maneuver frustrated a more ideological section of the bench, linked to Bolsonaro, who struggled to bury the legislative project for considering it a government success.

Criticism of Silas Câmara is restricted to the backstage of the evangelical block. There is no interest in publicly exposing the cracks, although they exist.

Eli Borges says he believes his successor “will do a job”. Câmara has “more openness with the government” without giving up the “Christian posture in our guidelines”, he says.

Former leader of the bench, Sóstenes Cavalcante (PL-RJ) defines him as a “very experienced” colleague and says he is convinced that he will defend “the interests of evangelical parliamentarians, and not of the government”.

Roberto Monteiro (PL-RJ) even had an argument with Câmara at a recent bench meeting, threatening to leave the group and only return when Eli Borges resumed the presidency, which is expected to happen in 2024. the deputy, who is the father of former Carioca councilor Gabriel Monteiro, arrested and impeached after accusations of rape.

“I did my part by being Bolsonaro. Now Bolsonaro is over, the story is different, the country cannot stop”, he says. “I’m not from the radical wing, I’m from the dialogue wing, because Christ himself makes no sense, [diz] ‘come to me all’, not just some.”