Government studies how to recreate Funasa without facing Congress – 07/05/2023 – Power

After the National Congress reversed President Lula’s (PT) decision to extinguish Funasa (National Health Foundation), the government plans to downsize the body’s original structure. Planalto, however, is studying ways to carry out the operation without confronting parliamentarians.

The fear of members of the government is that the recreation of the foundation will end up emptying ministries that were instituted by Lula’s administration at the expense of the reallocation of servers. Political articulators also fear that this reduction in the size of Funasa will contaminate the already delicate relationship with Parliament.

According to deputies, in order to try to resolve the issue, Minister Rui Costa (Casa Civil) said days ago to the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), that there will be the creation of a group with representatives of the Legislative and Executive in search of a consensual solution.

The group, however, has not yet left the paper. Therefore, parliamentarians are trying to speed up the approval of a PDL (draft legislative decree) authored by Senator Hiran (PP-RR), which reviews the acts that the government prepared to extinguish Funasa, including the transfer of servers to other portfolios.

Party leaders and the Planalto are trying to avoid voting on the PDL before they decide what the body’s new design will be.

Funasa had a budget of BRL 3.4 billion in 2022, under the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, with structures distributed across the 27 units of the Federation.

In addition to meaning a defeat for Lula, the recreation of Funasa by the congressmen also had an impact on the structure planned for the Esplanada. The president decided to have 37 ministries (14 more than Bolsonaro had), but determined that there would be no additional expenses in setting up the new folders.

For this reason, new ministries hoped to use the bonuses that would become available with the extinction of Funasa to fatten up their staff.

With the forecast of recomposition of the body, several ministries, from the Indigenous Peoples to the Institutional Relations Secretariat, run the risk of not being able to use these resources anymore.

Government members report that some commissioned posts have already been distributed and that, in this case, the ministry may be forced to return them.

Funasa has historically served as a negotiation instrument with parliamentarians, who appoint positions in exchange for government support.

In the Bolsonaro administration and previous ones, the body’s command and superintendencies were distributed according to the indication of political parties. The expectation is that it will be distributed to parliamentarians from the center, who led the recreation of the body.

Deputy Danilo Forte (União Brasil-CE), who has already presided over the foundation, is one of those quoted to lead the body again.

Lula sent a provisional measure to Congress that redesigned the Esplanada and provided for the extinction of the foundation.

With the prediction that it would cease to exist, the Ministry of Management reallocated Funasa’s employees to other bodies of the federal machine.

The Ministry of Health received the most employees from the foundation, 735 in total, followed by the Ministry of Management, with 434, and the Ministry of Cities, which received 233 employees.

Congress was against Lula and voted to recreate Funasa. After the decision, the Ministry of Management met with representatives of the foundation’s employees to advise that, for the time being, the employees’ situation will remain unchanged.

One of Funasa’s missions is to work on sanitation works to prevent and combat diseases in small towns and rural areas, and is linked to the Ministry of Health.

Lula’s allies, however, say that the Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, does not want the foundation back to try to avoid further political use of the portfolio.

For this reason, Planalto members are considering subordinating the body to the Ministry of Cities, which would also face resistance from parliamentarians.

The terms of a decree on the subject have been debated in the government. According to Planalto members, the decision to reduce the structure has already been taken.

Before the defeat in Congress, the decision to extinguish Funasa was not a consensus among Lula’s main allies in Parliament.

Since the beginning of the government, there was pressure, especially from the centrão, for the foundation to be maintained. For this reason, party leaders linked to the government were surprised by the submission of the provisional measure providing for the extinction of Funasa.

As the Panel showed, parliamentarians intend to pressure the government to recompose Funasa with budget and personnel.

Danilo Forte defends that the body be recreated with sufficient structure to serve small municipalities. He hopes to be part of the group that should be created to discuss changes in Funasa.

“I defend having a structure that can serve municipalities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and a change over direct execution to reduce the steps to speed up the works and have a greater return”, he says.

“It was agreed with Minister Rui Costa that there will be a work commission that will be set up to discuss the situation at Funasa. Rui was to point out the members of the Executive and Arthur Lira, of the Legislative”, says Forte.

The extinction of Funasa is not a consensus even within the PT. In the party, there are those who even defend its strengthening as an instrument of regional development thanks to the carrying out of works in the interior of the country.

Defenders of its maintenance allege that Funasa could accommodate political appointees in its structure, oiling the government’s political articulation.