Lula unlocks amendments without transparency and repeats Bolsonaro – 06/25/2023 – Politics

President Lula (PT) began to unlock the funds he inherited from the extinct rapporteur’s amendments, but the government did not provide the promised transparency about the release of these resources. The lack of transparency in the payment of this type of amendment was criticized by the PT during the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) administration.

Rapporteur’s amendments were the main bargaining chip mechanism between the Bolsonaro government and Congress, but were declared unconstitutional by the STF (Federal Supreme Court) in December.

The Executive then incorporated the money into the ministries’ budgets, but made a political agreement with Congress whereby R$9.9 billion would be distributed as if they were parliamentary amendments.

A Sheet showed on Tuesday (20) that the Planalto Palace began distributing this amount, with the first release favoring the states of Ministers Carlos Fávaro (Agriculture) and Jader Filho (Cities). The government did not inform who were the authors of the resource indications.

The two ministers are considered quotas of centrist parties in the negotiation that Lula led at the end of last year to attract parties to the base – PSD, by Fávaro, and MDB, by Jader Filho.

The money is recorded as the ministries’ budget. However, as it is not formally considered an amendment (amount used as directed by Congress), data on which parliamentarian or public manager requested the transfer was not disclosed.

In a response given in March via the LAI (Access to Information Law), the SRI (Secretary of Institutional Relations), responsible for political articulation, informed that the execution of the budget of R$ 9.9 billion renamed with the end of the rapporteur’s amendments it would be done with “absolute transparency and technical criteria, to ensure maximum effectiveness of the investments to be made”.

At the time, the folder said that guidelines to ensure transparency were being prepared “internally” in the government. In May, the secretariat published an ordinance determining that ministries make a selection of proposals for applying the budget, in addition to publishing the result of this analysis.

Days later, Minister Alexandre Padilha (Institutional Relations) said that he had changed “from water to wine” the way in which these funds were released during the Lula administration. “So much so that you can say exactly who the funds were released to.”

In response to the Sheet via LAI on Thursday (22), the folder repeated that the ministries must “publish the result of the call” of proposals for indications of the amendments inherited from the Bolsonaro administration. He also stated that “these allocations do not apply to any type of indication of beneficiaries by their authors”.

Without showing the result of the analysis of the proposals, however, the Lula government has already pledged (step prior to the payment) R$ 210.2 million of the resource that migrated to the Executive’s cash with the end of the rapporteur’s amendments.

Of this amount, R$ 145 million were released by the Ministry of Agriculture, mainly for road recovery works in Mato Grosso, a state politically represented by Minister Fávaro.

Agriculture said, in a note, that it evaluated more than 8,000 proposals for transferring resources. The folder also said that it observes regional priorities, among other factors, when releasing the budget.

According to the ministry commanded by Fávaro, “there is no fixed identification of the author or parliamentary beneficiary” as the resource is within the discretionary expenses of the federal government.

The centrão was irritated to learn that the government used the money it inherited from the extinct amendments of the rapporteur to allocate money to the electoral bases of ministers. As he showed SheetPlanalto demanded explanations from the ministries and determined that part of the transfers be undone to avoid a new crisis with parliamentarians.

During the election campaign, Lula went so far as to call the rapporteur’s amendments the “biggest corruption scheme today”, “secret budget” and “bolsolão”. The PT administration, however, circumvented the Supreme Court’s decision and negotiated the sharing of this resource based on agreements made with Congress to expand its support base.

In recent years, Congress has pulverized billions of amendments with tractors, asphalt and transfers to health without observing technical criteria and regional priorities. Leaders of the House and Senate do not want to give up this power in the Lula 3 government.

The agreement signed by the Lula administration and Congress foresees that the R$ 9.9 billion that passed into the hands of the ministries will also serve to meet the interests of deputies and senators.

The government put a specific stamp on these funds, in order to formalize and organize the payments. That money was divided among seven ministries in the political agreement, which involved the tops of the Chamber and the Senate and which was endorsed by Lula.

In practice, Lula created a new mechanism to allocate funds to Congress and expand its support base. He also established that, in order to spend the money, the ministries should follow the political articulation of the Executive. The new transparency system is still under development.

Despite predicting the disclosure of godparents, Planalto members began to discuss the possibility that, in some cases, only mayors appear on the list as beneficiaries of the transfers —thus hiding possible political intermediation by some parliamentarian.

The 2023 Budget reserves BRL 36.5 billion in individual amendments, by state benches and by congressional thematic committees. BRL 6.6 billion were committed and BRL 2.4 billion of that amount was paid. The government has given more pace to individual amendments, which are those that every deputy and senator is entitled to.