PT and PL unite against Zema in the MG Assembly – 01/27/2023 – Power

After a fierce dispute in the election for the federal government in 2022, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s PT and Jair Bolsonaro’s PL joined forces in Minas Gerais to elect the next president of the state’s Legislative Assembly.

In addition to the defense of the same name for the position, that of the re-elected deputy Tadeu Leite (MDB), the union of the two parties also affected the governor, Romeu Zema (Novo), who already had the PT as an opponent, but was the main Bolsonaro’s election in Minas in the then president’s campaign for re-election.

Zema initially articulated that deputy Roberto Andrade (Avante), leader of the government, also re-elected, be placed as the candidate of his political group in the dispute for the command of the House. Upon realizing that Tadeu Leite was gaining strength, he gave up.

The governor tried to articulate another name for the command of the House, which would come from the PSD, but, in the end, he capitulated and will support the emedebista. The election takes place on Wednesday (1), when the state deputies who won last year’s election take over. The tendency is for Leite to be the only candidate.

The partnership between bolsonaristas and lulistas in Minas made deputies on both sides seek justifications for the until recently unlikely union between the two groups, whatever the objective.

The PL bench in the Assembly has, for example, Bruno Engler (PL), re-elected parliamentarian with the highest number of votes in the state and protagonist of heated clashes with PT members in the plenary and House committees.

Engler is among the former president’s main supporters in Minas. The deputy has as reference Olavo de Carvalho, intellectual mentor of Bolsonaristas.

Throughout the former president’s term, Engler was frequently invited by the president to visit the Planalto Palace, which even occurred on weekends, along with other Minas Gerais parliamentarians who supported the former president.

There are deputies who avoid commenting on the union of the two parties. On the PT side, the re-elected parliamentarian Ulysses Gomes, leader of the minority in the Assembly, said he had commitments and, therefore, would not give an interview about the partnership with the PL.

It fell to the deputy leader, Leninha Souza (PT), the task. The parliamentarian claims that the party had already endorsed Leite’s candidacy. “We’ve been together since the first hour. Who came later was the PL”, says the deputy, also re-elected.

The deputy claims that there is no constraint in approaching the PL for the election of the Board of Directors. “We have the maturity to build the best policy. And if the candidate has the capacity to unite forces, it is to his credit”, she explains.

For the PL, the leader of the party in the Assembly, the re-elected deputy Gustavo Santana, says it is necessary to separate the national dispute between Bolsonaro and Lula from the election for the presidency of the Assembly.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other. The chosen president will be the president of the 77 deputies in the House, and in it we have all the parties”, he argues.

Santana says he still does not know if the partnership with the PT for the election of the command of the Board of Directors could also result in an agreement for the two parties to be together in a parliamentary bloc. “It’s too early to talk about it,” he says.

The deputy governor and one of Zema’s main political articulators, Mateus Simões (Novo), asked if Zema complained about the fact that the PL did not support his candidate, said that the government’s objective is to pacify the base. The deputy said that Zema will support Leite.

“As all the potential candidates were from parties that were already with us since the election, Avante and MDB, or since the second round, PL, or since the post-election talks, PSD, there was no reason to work outside the unification. natural (milk support)”, says Simões.

PT and PL elected in last year’s election, respectively, the largest and second largest benches in the Legislative Assembly. Lula’s party will have 12 seats and Bolsonaro’s, 10.

Throughout his first four years as governor, and also in the articulations for forming his base for the second term, Zema always had difficulties in his relationship with the Assembly.

During most of his government, the governor had no more than 21 of the 77 deputies in the House in his loyal base.

The lack of support meant that one of Zema’s main dreams, the privatization of Cemig, the state energy company in the state, which needs to be approved by the legislature, was never carried out.

The problems in the House remained even after the governor’s victory in the first round in last year’s election. Zema defeated the former mayor of Belo Horizonte, Alexandre Kalil (PSD), in the race for the Tiradentes Palace.

In early December, government accounts indicated that the governor would start his second term with 32 parliamentarians in his base. A PEC (Proposed Constitutional Amendment) which is the necessary text for the approval of the privatization of Cemig, for example, needs the vote of 48 deputies.

The report contacted deputy Tadeu Leite’s advisory and is waiting for a response.