Under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), it was common to attribute the large number of presidential vetoes overturned by Congress to the political incapacity, or even hostility, of the president. However, the same cannot be said of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
Survey carried out by Leaf shows that Lula – historically recognized for his negotiating skills – saw 49.4% of his vetoes rejected by parliamentarians during the first three years of his third term. The percentage exceeds the 44.2% of Bolsonaro’s quadrennium.
Apart from these two cases, nothing like this has happened since the restoration of democracy in the country. The index was only 1.6% in the first two governments of the PT leader; previously, 1% under Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB). The figures are increasing, it is true, with Dilma Rousseff (PT), 4.9%, and Michel Temer (MDB), 14.6%.
There is more than one reason for this phenomenon. The first is institutional: in 2013, Congress established rules and deadlines for reviewing vetoes – until then, it was common for them to go years, sometimes more than a decade, without being evaluated.
The correct improvement of the legislation was also a symptom of the beginning of the weakening of presidential power, in a year marked by the wave of popular protests that shook Brazilian politics. Dilma, then president, experienced a decline in popularity, a difficult re-election in 2014 and impeachment proceedings in 2016.
Since then, with the intensification of polarization, no occupant of the Palácio do Planalto enjoys a high level of prestige among the electorate, making it difficult to retain members of Congress.
Temer managed to minimize the problem by sharing his government with the majority forces in Parliament. Bolsonaro, who initially refused political appointments to his ministry, went to the center midterm to avoid being impeached.
Victorious in 2022 with a minimal margin of votes, Lula sought to repeat the formula of his first governments: he handed over the main positions to the PT and distributed secondary portfolios to the allies of the center and the right. In the new political context, it faces increasing obstacles for the approval of its projects.
In itself, the cancellation of presidential vetoes is not as harmful as the multiplication of parliamentary amendments, another consequence of the fragility of the Executive. However, the risks of instability are high, because such a procedure was not designed to be trivial, requiring an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies (257 votes out of 513) and in the Senate (41 out of 81).
In the case of a Congress fragmented into more than a dozen parties with little programmatic coherence and therefore very permeable to short-term interests and pressures from organized groups, its main role is far from ensuring a coherent agenda for the country.
editorials@grupofolha.com.br
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