The ease of assembling a majority and imposing defeats, some of them bitter, on the government could give the impression that the presidents of the House of Representatives and the Senate are emerging victorious from the confrontations, but calculating losses and gains while maintaining this environment is not as simple as it seems.
The PEC’s conclusion on impunity should have taught representatives and senators, especially on the eve of having to go and ask for votes in their bases, that there is a limit to which society is willing to accept complicity, defending corporate agendas, and ignoring issues like the environment, tax justice, and the fight against impunity.
Recent operations carried out by the Federal Police in partnership with the Federal Revenue Authority have demonstrated the extent of the distant relations from the Republic between businessmen involved in all types of delinquencies with the crowned Speakers of Parliament.
These communications resulted in the approval of parliamentary amendments and the introduction of draft laws specifically designed to facilitate transfers and their very high leverage operations. Supporters of the congressional elite were feted, flown on planes and cajoled by names such as Daniele Forcaro, of Master, and Ricardo Magro, of Grupo Fit (renovated after an attempt to modify its image).
If it is true that the defeats of the government by Hugo Motta and Davy Alcolombre highlight Lula’s inability to form a majority and dialogue with the legislature, and that this may have an electoral cost, it is also true that the contradiction between the agendas of the bombs and the evil they impose on the executive and the evidence that the National Front has closed its siege to close friends in the group of these same leaders is entirely negative for Congress.
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Moreover: the sophisticated engineering of tax evasion, currency evasion and money laundering, evident in all these recent operations, ultimately ends up as a retrospective endorsement of the insistence of the economic team led by Fernando Haddad on the taxation of exclusive and offshore funds and, more recently, the imposition of the obvious: the necessity for all money holders to declare their partnership fund.
Not all exclusive and offshore funds are a means of committing violations. But there was a clear loophole used by criminals. In addition, taxes are fair to everyone, including those who work legally.
Given the staggering scale of tax evasion in just one case, the Revit case, it is impossible to justify the action taken by many judicial bodies in broad daylight, from Central to the right, against voting on the project that punishes the persistent debtor. The deviation of this position, and Hugo Motta’s delay in discussing the matter, became more apparent when it became clear that defending this issue united Lula and Tarcisio de Freitas, as the matter was urgent.
It is not so bad for the government to appear defeated in battles in which it sides with the National Front and imposes taxes on the wealthy or tax evaders, while Congress uses various pretexts to protect them. This is one of the cases where victory may mean exhaustion of the legislative leadership.
The same thing happens with the overthrow of Lula’s veto, which was intended to protect the scorched-earth legislation on environmental permits promoted by the House of Representatives and the Senate. The damage to the image is entirely up to Congress – which doesn’t care, at least until Brazil begins to suffer the economic consequences of loosening environmental regulations at a time when markets such as Europe and even China are demanding it more.
The government makes the mistake of jumping on the bandwagon whenever there is a sign that its popularity is rising, as happened in the process of falsifying the nomination of Jorge Messias without agreeing with the Senate. But Congress doubles its mistake when it uses this excuse to trample on nuclear bomb agendas and defend undeniable interests. It seems clear that this massive list of clashes is not in the interests of either side, much less for a country with so many pressing needs, from security to financial stability.
