‘There is no full democracy if the party does not recruit women’ – 06/03/2023 – Politics

The gender political violence law, sanctioned in August 2021, represented a victory for the female bench in Congress, but, after 19 months, more than half of Brazilian political parties still have not adapted to the rules.

At the head of the working group created to prevent violence against women and demand affirmative actions of female inclusion by the parties, Raquel Branquinho, regional attorney of the Republic, evaluates that the Brazilian legislation is abundant and adequate, but that there is a structural obstacle in the parties for the effective participation of women.

“Our main problem is that we have the norms, but we are not seeing the concreteness, which is the increase in female seats”, he says.

She ponders, however, that there are advances. It is the first legislature of Congress that will have an LGBTQIA+ bench.

The deficit of women in political office is related to different types of violence, according to the attorney. A recurring pattern in the complaints made in 2022 was that of political violence of an economic nature.

“It is the violence practiced within the scope of the party, which makes female participation unfeasible, difficult or constraining. It is a difficult segment to investigate, but there has been a large increase [de casos]”, she says. She exemplifies: “women are attracted with false promises that they will have logistical, technical, financial and legal support in the campaigns”, which is not fulfilled in practice.

Faced with the slowness of the parties to update their statutes with measures to prevent and repress gender political violence —one of the predictions of the new law—, the Electoral Public Ministry sent a series of letters to the parties and, according to Raquel Branquinho, does not rule out prosecuting the question.

“Political parties are still not conducive to female participation. There is no way to have full representative democracy in Brazil without them being open to it,” he says.

The legislation is not just about criminalization, it establishes an affirmative policy to overcome female underrepresentation in public office. The attorney points out that one problem is the usual rush for women to participate only on the eve of elections, to fill the 30% quota.

Are the parties complying with the law to combat gender-based political violence? Not satisfactorily. One of the biggest obstacles is the inclusion of women. We already have enough legislation for affirmative action, which has existed since the 1990s; legislation is improved even by the influx of decisions from higher courts, such as the Superior Electoral Court and the Federal Supreme Court, which always guide towards greater effectiveness, but political parties are still not conducive to female participation. There is no way to have the fullness of representative democracy in Brazil without them being open to it, because it is through them that the entire political electoral process takes place.

The law says that parties have to amend their statutes to contemplate actions to combat political gender violence and to guarantee women’s political rights. How many have changed? 120 days after the enactment of the law, we sent letters to all political parties. None responded. We started the working group a month later. The Deputy Attorney General for Elections, Paulo Gonet, sent a new round of letters to all, with specific recommendations [somente PT, o PSOL e União Brasil responderam].

Today we have 19 parties and federations that still do not satisfactorily comply with the law – or have not responded to letters [como Patriota, Novo, PP e Rede] or claim to be in the process of adapting [como PSB, PSDB e PSTU]. It must be said that some parties may have internal affirmative policies, but have not adapted them to the norms of the law.

Will they respond for this non-compliance? It is possible to take legal measures, which will always depend on an interpretation by the Judiciary, which needs to be done very carefully. We have to move forward in establishing a judicial model, because the rapporteur of the case can simply say that it is a matter of party autonomy. We are going to schedule a round of seminars with the parties, present those who are formally ready and start monitoring to see how they are adopting the measures in practice. The idea is to get out of this with all parties respecting, at least, the formal part. If this is not feasible, we will analyze legal measures.

Faced with the work of the group, especially in the election, Mrs. Did you detect any pattern of violence? During the election, political-economic violence increased significantly, that practiced within the scope of the party, which prevents, hinders or constrains female participation in campaigns. It’s a more difficult segment to investigate, but we’ve noticed a big increase.

Can you give an example? Women are often invited to run as candidates (the party must have 30% women), they are recruited with promises of logistical, financial and legal support in the campaign —and without that support, we know it is very difficult—, and the promises are not fulfilled. In the recent past, we have had women who were left to their own devices and then had to answer for rendering of accounts that they had no management over.

The transfer of resources has to be proportional to the number of women, if there are 30%, it has to transfer 30%, of the resources of the two funds, the special one for the electoral campaign and the one for the parties. The parties receive [o dinheiro]women are called, invited, and the allocation often goes to men’s campaigns.

How do you rate law enforcement for women? transsexuals? Just another pattern we noticed was directed at black and trans women. Several politicians came out of ostracism and became known to a certain niche through the mechanism of attacking women. In Rio, we had a state deputy who has jurisdiction in the regional court and the victim was a black trans councilwoman. The court received the complaint, it is an important precedent [o caso é do deputado Rodrigo Amorim (PTB), réu por violência política de gênero contra a vereadora Benny Briolly (PSOL)].

Practically speaking, how should subtitles act to increase gender representation? We indicated guidelines in a recent technical note, how to create an institutional policy to promote measures to increase, empower and bring women into politics. It’s no use on the eve of elections looking for women to fill the ticket and contemplate the 30%.

It is foreseen in the Constitution that 5% of the party fund be used for the promotion of policies for the greater integration of women and black people in the party institution, a seminar or a booklet is not enough. It is necessary to go to schools, associations, parties, where you can communicate with this public. It has to be a constant policy.

Regarding the repression of violence, we propose what the law itself says: identify situations of abuse that anyone linked to the party (and we have published several booklets about this), install administrative investigation processes and appropriate punishments.

We know that 2022 was an atypical calendar year to apply a more dynamic policy, but some parties reported that they would implement these in party conventions and, in the end, just over half complied fully or partially with the formality of the change of statute.

What is your expectation for the application of the law in non-election years? We are going to work on training lawyers, mainly from the point of view that, when you have a transsexual parliamentarian who is the victim of any kind of violence, the first measure [judicial] to be considered is that of political gender violence, then come the other crimes, which can be worked on jointly. But actions cannot be dispersed to another type of representation.

We face difficulties many times because of those who operate the law, the electoral promoter, the police chief, who are not aware of how to deal with the issue from this perspective. Then it takes a while, there is no result, which is difficult for the victim, who needs a quick referral.

The victims themselves make representations to the Civil Police for the crime of threatening. When a woman holds an elective office, she does not have to think about threats, but about gender-based political violence. If there are other crimes together, they will be investigated together. Political violence does not depend on representation, it is a special crime in relation to others.

President Lula announced that he will criminalize companies that do not match wages, which is already provided for by law. What did Mrs. What does the government expect on this agenda? Brazil has structural problems that place us at the bottom of any ranking of female representation in parliaments. The country has already been condemned in international courts for discrimination. Women find it difficult to occupy decision-making positions in the public and private spheres and our society is violent. This is not resolved overnight.

What I see is a paradigm shift in how to handle the situation. There will be hits and misses, but only in creating specific secretariats [Ministério dos Povos Indígenas e Ministério dos Direitos Humanos] you put Brazil back in international discussions. It will take almost 200 years for us to have effective equality. It is necessary to have, in addition to legislation, inspection and punishment. Legislation without punishment ends up reinforcing irregular conduct.

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X-RAY | Raquel Branquinho, 52

Coordinates the Working Group on Political Gender Violence of the Electoral Public Ministry. She is the Regional Attorney of the Republic in Brasilia and also coordinates the Nucleus of Original Criminal Actions at the Regional Attorney of the Republic in the 1st Region. She has worked for more than two decades at the Federal Public Ministry. She worked in the Operation Lava Jato working group, in the PGR, in the monthly allowance, in 2006, and in the investigation of the Banestado case, in 2004. She is from Franca (SP) and has a degree in law from Unesp and a master’s degree from the Catholic University of Brasília of human rights and corruption.