The system of explicit and implicit financing of electoral campaigns in Brazil has developed anomalies and unfavorable incentives that have contributed to moving political representation away from the objective of reflecting the demands of society and bringing it closer to groups disinterested in the common good.
A classic example of the mania of national authorities to combat an excess by creating another excess, the Federal Court (STF) ruled unconstitutional, in 2015, the financial contribution of companies to electoral candidacies.
This was yet another heterodox interpretation of the Constitution, in which the Court intended to act as a legislator and a body for rectifying national problems. At that time, ministers were irritated by the climate then favorable to Lava Jato. The majority later changed their minds, but corporate donations remained prohibited.
The political community was not frustrated by the ruling, because it quickly understood that it had carte blanche from the highest court to put its foot on the accelerator of public campaign financing. Electoral and party funds for 2026 forecast record and staggering disbursements that will exceed 6 billion reais.
At the same time, Federal MPs and Senators have turned the discretionary funds of the Union Budget into their exclusive hunting territory. Today, they determine the execution of 60 billion reais per year, resources that are not very effective for federal public policies and difficult to monitor.
In these two movements, the party oligarchies have captured tens of billions of reais which, in each cycle, are used mainly with the logic of perpetuating their power.
Crime and corruption, which they wanted to combat by closing the doors to corporate financing, enter through other wide open passages.
The bad practice of the amendments gives rise to frequent operations by the federal police against members of Congress. The money of organized crime, which does not encounter barriers like those erected against companies in the legal sector, irrigates the accounts, inside and outside the countryside, of those who, in governments and parliaments, defend their criminal agenda.
As the merger between amendments and electoral funds is reinforced by the rules created by those who have an interest in their permanence, the longer we wait to combat the problem, the more difficult the task will be.
It is necessary to return to the otherwise obvious principle that parties are organizations serving society, not the state, and that society must finance itself.
Restoring, perhaps through constitutional reform, corporate electoral donations – provided they are transparent and limited to reasonable monetary values – and reducing public campaign funds and parliamentary amendments would make the system more representative of society and less publicity, inefficiency and crime.
editorials@grupofolha.com.br
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