Elevated to the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies as a consensual solution after the Arthur Lira era, Hugo Motta arrived at this position with rare political capital. He received votes from the right and the left, from the opposition and the government base, built a large majority and expressed himself as a symbolic heir of the democracy of 1988. Less than a year later, the results are different: successive defeats, pressure from the far right, agreements concluded in his absence and a presidency which does not seem to understand, in practice, the extent of the power he occupies.
Coming from the Republican Party, a party strongly linked to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and enjoying consolidated influence with the party’s president, Marcos Pereira, Hugo Motta was considered a feasible means to pacify the House in the post-Lira era. His election reflects exactly that. It was not an ideological project, but a functional arrangement. A name capable of speaking to everyone, precisely because it does not clearly identify with any of the poles.
The problem begins when electoral consensus is confused with permanent authorization. As soon as he took office, Motta came under pressure from the far right to offer amnesty to Jair Bolsonaro and those involved in the acts of January 8, in addition to projects with a clear ideological bias. By trying to manage these demands without breaking with the government or the center, he enters into an erratic movement. Don’t decide, postpone. Don’t lead, manage crises.
Motta belongs to a political generation resulting from redemocratization. A generation which has not experienced rupture, but which has inherited its symbols. In his inauguration speech, he mentioned Ulysses Guimarães, praised the 1988 Constitution and spoke of democracy as a founding value. The problem is that democracy, in Parliament, is not rhetoric. It’s a method. This is the commandment. It’s forced reading. It’s knowing when to move forward and when to hold back.
The President of the House must dominate the time and the plenary. And this is exactly where Motta fails. The recent failures in the impeachment attempts of Glauber Braga and Carla Zambelli are exemplary. In both cases, the outcome was not just a political decision. It was a message. The Chamber showed that it could decide without him. Agreements were made from outside, leaders acted outside the presidency, and the plenary established itself as a sovereign body in the face of a weakened leadership.
For the person who occupies the most powerful seat in Parliament, this is serious. It’s not about winning all the votes, but not being ignored. When the plenary learns that it can bypass the president, the authority quickly dissolves.
In this context, the circulating image of Hugo Motta drinking directly from a bottle of whiskey has acquired symbolic force. Hence the ironic association with The Drunkard and the Treadmill, by João Bosco and Aldir Blanc, immortalized by Elis Regina. The metaphor is tempting but inaccurate. Motta is not a drunkard in the sense of caricature, nor a tightrope walker in the sense of refined political skill.
What we are seeing is something more worrying. A president who seeks to balance dishes without controlling the kitchen. This confuses conciliation with lack of command. Who believes that positional symbolism alone supports the authority that the plenary only recognizes when there is effective leadership?
The possibility of re-election formally exists. The legislature ends and another begins. But politics is not only governed by rules. If Hugo Motta continues to act as he does, it will be difficult for him to renew his mandate. Not because he’s right or left, but because weak presidencies don’t survive Congress.
The House does not oust presidents for ideological reasons. Falls due to inefficiency. And Hugo Motta, by insisting on balance without exercising command, runs the risk of leaving history not as the heir of Ulysses, but as a president who never understood that in Parliament, democracy without leadership is just empty rhetoric.
Marcio Ferreira is a journalist with a master’s degree in sociology and a doctorate in political sociology at PPGSP-IUPERU/UCAM. Article transcribed from Monde-diplomatique-Brasil https://diplomatique.org.br/
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