Since taking the helm of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB) has been testing his authority. By setting a broad voting schedule for the final two weeks of work in the Legislature, he hoped to clarify the agenda and clear up lingering questions that made 2025 a year truncated by institutional upheaval.
But the brutal scenes of this Tuesday and the way he handled yet another crisis show that Motta still has great difficulty leading a House increasingly divided by political polarization and asserting his authority without resorting to force, which is impossible when it comes to a House of representatives elected by the people.
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The agenda announced by Motta includes both priority projects for the Lula government, which he approved with Minister Fernando Haddad, and the proposal that modifies the dosimetry of the sentences of those found guilty of the attempted coup d’état of January 8, 2023 and also of the creation of the putschist plot that occurred under the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
The President of the Chamber also decided to include in the end-of-year sale the deliberation on the situation of the deputies whose mandates are under surveillance for different reasons: Carla Zambelli and Alexandre Ramagem, both of the PL, condemned by the Federal Supreme Court, Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL-SP), who left the country, was the subject of several impeachment requests and could lose his mandate for misconduct, and Glauber Braga (PSOL-RJ), whose impeachment was recommended by the House Ethics Council in April, due to the assault he committed against an MBL activist, in 2024.
The occupation of the Chamber Table by Braga calls into question the functioning of the Chamber and the Internal Regulations, in the same way as that carried out by right-wing deputies during Bolsonaro’s house arrest. Preventing the House from doing its job is an authoritarian attitude whether it comes from the right or the left. It is up to the Speaker of the House to restore normalcy and assert his authority.
If, the first time, Motta did not act on the side of the bolsonaristas, he has now given up and ordered the Legislative Police to forcibly exclude Braga from the Board of Directors, after having ordered the cutting of the TV Câmara signal and preventing the press from accessing the plenary — ensured by the accreditation carried out by the vehicles with the Board of Directors itself. He was criticized for not having asserted the prerogatives of the presidency with some and for having crossed the line with others. Not to mention the cruelty authorized by the police against parliamentarians and journalists, who must be the subject of investigations and sanctions.
Scenes of police savagery in the Parliament of a democratic country are not acceptable. In addition: faced with the regrettable scenes of a parliamentarian still in office being snatched by police officers, which is only possible thanks to live transmissions from the cell phones of other deputies, Motta should have been in plenary session to calm the spirits and curb the excesses, but he preferred to express himself on social networks, further relativizing the violence by speaking of “possible excesses” in relation to the press.
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The political polarization that divides the country finds fertile ground in the House, the most vociferous of Congress’s chambers. A legislature in which sealers on the left and right pontificate and in which the “cell phone bench” is nonpartisan imposes additional challenges on elected officials to run the job.
Issues such as balanced budgets, fiscal justice and public security, essential to the country, clashed throughout the year with attempts to approve amnesty for those who attempted to carry out a coup and to protect parliamentarians from investigations. Navigating these turbulent seas requires the ability to dialogue, formulate and, above all, impose limits on deputies and magistrates who put personal and parochial interests before the country. So far, the balance in the House and Senate is negative.
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