MST says it met with Lira for an agreement – 04/25/2023 – Mônica Bergamo

The national coordinator of the MST (Movement of Landless Rural Workers) João Paulo Rodrigues also claims to feel “hopeful” that the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), will prevent the installation of a CPI to investigate the movement.

Lira said that this week she will read the application for the creation of the commission, which has already reached the minimum number of 172 signatures to be installed.

The decision was announced in the midst of the movement’s actions in the Embrapa area on farms and at Incra (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform) headquarters.

João Paulo revealed to the column that he met with Lira two weeks ago, even before the movement’s actions, precisely to talk about the creation of the CPI.

According to him, the conversation was “very respectful, Lira was very serious with us”. And the conclusion of the MST and the president of the Chamber, says João Paulo, was that an agreement would be possible to avoid the installation of the commission.

“I started by saying that he is a rural producer, but that, in the position he is in, he needs to be impartial, or disorganize the Republic. And asking him to point out to me a single fact, in the last five years, that would justify the creation of the CPI. No exists. All the occupations we did, without exception, were on unproductive or abandoned land”, says the landless leader.

“The April Day, when we promoted occupations, did not happen. There were only two”, he says, referring to the invasions by Embrapa and another one in Espírito Santo.

João Paulo claims that Lira listened to him carefully. And she would have said, “You convinced me.”

That alone, however, would not be enough.

The president of the Chamber would have said that it would be necessary for the MST to convince the powerful Parliamentary Front for Agriculture to reduce the pressure for the creation of the CPI.

“We were supposed to talk again last Tuesday [dia 18] and to arrange a meeting with the deputies of the ruralist group”, says the MST leader.

Arthur Lira, however, “disappeared” from the movement’s radar. He no longer took phone calls or scheduled any new conversations.

“But I still think he will negotiate. Because we left his house precisely with that agenda, of dialogue and understanding”, says João Paulo Rodrigues.

_{with BIANKA VIEIRA, KARINA MATIAS It is MANOELLA SMITH}

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