The accumulation of crises reveals power struggles and institutional disarray

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The turbulence scenario has been common in recent years. According to experts, pressures arising from changes in budgetary rules, the popularity of ideas and figures who despise democracy, as well as power struggles between institutions are leading the country to experience permanent tensions.

One of the fundamental precepts of modern democracies, independence and harmony of powers, has become a constant challenge. The instability is testing the system of checks and balances laid out in the 1988 Constitution – a historic guarantee of Brazil’s longest period of democracy.

Author of the term “coalition presidentialism”, sociologist Sergio Abranches believes that the Three Powers go beyond skills.

— There is a disorder in relations between the powers in Brazil that must be resolved. Congress invades the powers of the executive and judiciary. The judiciary invades the legislative branch, and the executive invades as well. The citizen gets lost in this discussion, because he is not obliged to be an expert in matters of the Constitution. And it is at the mercy of adventurers, because it does not have the institutional stability that the regime needs.

The most recent case regarding Gilmar’s decision is symptomatic. For experts, the magistrate decided to act inappropriately by creating new rules for the impeachment procedure and annulling points of the legislation.

Motivation, however, reveals another institutional concern. Opposition politicians led by former President Jair Bolsonaro are giving priority number one to securing a majority in the Senate in 2026, precisely to “clean out” the STF.

Less than two weeks ago, Bolsonaro began serving a prison sentence for attempted coup d’état, another face of the dismay of political forces facing institutions.

— The solution is to put the Supreme Court back on the collegial path and return to the democratic process what belongs to the democratic process. At the same time, it is important that Congress does not react in the heat of the moment, issuing punitive PECs or structural reforms impulsively, believes Miguel Godoy, professor at UFPR and UnB.

Professor of public policy management at USP, Pablo Ortellado believes that the recent decisions of members of the Supreme Court, taken exceptionally, have become increasingly dangerous:

— It is not in the nature of any Power to restrict itself. Once it is allowed to expand, legitimized, it is difficult to put the toothpaste back into the tube. We must condemn these movements.

In the relationship between the Supreme Court and Congress, monocratic decisions, like that of Gilmar, have long been the target of complaints from parliamentarians, who have already tried to limit them through proposed amendments to the Constitution.

Historian and professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and Princeton, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz recalls that tensions between the powers have already occurred at other times, including within the monarchy. But for her, the current period of conflict is especially marked by the rise in power of the Congress.

— It is a movement that goes back to Eduardo Cunha (as President of the House) and marks a kind of transition from a political system more or less delimited by the institutions of 1988 to a very undefined model and which was not the result of a republican debate, of a public debate, which makes it more incomplete and aggravates this political crisis, which is a crisis of political representation — says Schwarcz.

The main example of Parliament’s progress, parliamentary amendments represent one of the sources of the crisis. In 2019, during the first year of the Bolsonaro government, this amount rose to 19 billion reais per year, amounts already adjusted for inflation. Five years later, this amount has more than doubled: in 2025, Congress is expected to distribute 51.2 billion reais. In 2015, under the government of Dilma Rousseff, the Constitution was amended, making certain amendments mandatory, in a process that has progressed in recent years.

The multiplication of amendments reduces the investment capacity of the Executive and strengthens Congress.

— This process begins with the process of deinstitutionalization of Congress, which occurred precisely with the weak presidents of the Republic, Dilma and Bolsonaro. The reaction of Congress, for example by creating mandatory amendments, occurs at times when presidents do not want to use their legislative prerogatives — explains political scientist and researcher at the University of Lisbon, Beatriz Rey.

In recent weeks, Alcolumbre’s relations with the government have deteriorated after Lula decided to appoint Messias to the Supreme Court. The next day, the President of the Senate, who preferred the name of his colleague Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), announced the vote in the Chamber of a “bomb agenda” for the government: the approval of benefits for health professionals, with an impact of 100 billion reais over ten years.

— It’s a terrible waste of energy. A country that has a serious fiscal problem, the result of terrible budgetary rigidity, the result of rights created in the Constitution that are not included in the budget, of all this need for structural reforms, and we are incapable of leading the efforts — says economist Zeina Latif.

There is also criticism of the investigations opened by the STF, mainly the investigation into fake news, carried out in secret since 2019 and which has no chance of success. Last week, Minister Alexandre de Moraes said there was no “judicial power as strong as that of Brazil.”

Political scientist Cláudio Couto, professor at FGV-SP, says that every power “tests the limits” and does not give up on what it has achieved: