Lira offers services to Lula in exchange for a reward – 03/11/2023 – Bruno Boghossian

Arthur Lira wouldn’t have accumulated the power he has today if he didn’t know how to read the winds of politics. But the president of the Chamber did not just make a disinterested analysis when he stated, at the beginning of the week, that “the government still does not have a consistent basis” to pass simple matters in Congress.

No one at the Planalto Palace interpreted Lira’s statement as a simple warning. Lula’s assistants understood that the leader of the centrão presented a problem with the objective of offering his services in attracting additional votes for the government, in exchange for rewards.

Planalto political articulators recognize that Lira can help. Lula assembled a coalition that was parked in the house of 270 deputies from the first days of his mandate. That’s more than half of the 513 seats in the House, but the government would be in danger if a handful of deputies got a toothache and others got stuck in the elevator at voting time.

Lira tries to sell the government its influence over deputies that are outside that orbit. They are parliamentarians from their PP, a few from the PL and names of government parties (MDB, PSD and União Brasil) that are more connected to the centrão than to the PT.

Lula does not want to outsource a decisive part of his political operation to the centrão. At the same time, she has no interest in measuring strength with Lira. The order is to keep the articulation power concentrated in the Planalto, but to take advantage of the performance of the president of the Chamber to obtain decisive votes.

The president indicated that he intends to have this society standing in the first government interest votes. Since he was re-elected, Lira has been consulted about the permanence of some of his sponsors in positions in the federal machine and managed to preserve posts that he had occupied in the Jair Bolsonaro administration.

The second sign came last Thursday (9). Days after the pessimistic diagnosis, the head of the centrão sat down to eat barbecue with Lula and the palace ministers.

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