Six days after officializing an additional block of BRL 2.6 billion in this year’s Budget, the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government is holding back information on which bodies were affected by the lock on expenses.
The posture of hiding the data occurs in the midst of the electoral dispute. Government persons heard with reservation by the Sheet admit that “the campaign will catch fire in the next few days” and any ad can generate noise.
On August 31, the Ministry of Economy sent to Congress a proposal for a Budget for 2023 with cuts spread across various social and political actions that benefit women — who make up 53% of the electorate and reject, for the most part, Bolsonaro’s re-election.
The news about the cuts planned for next year had a bad repercussion and were widely used as ammunition by the opposing camp to erode the president’s image. Scissors were the subject of electoral programs on TV and also appeared in presidential debates.
Past experience has made the government more averse to giving wide publicity to the new blockade in this year’s Budget. The political wing was also frustrated because there was an expectation that the reassessment would allow for a release of resources, which did not materialize.
The need to contain expenses was announced on September 22, at a press conference given by technicians from the Ministry of Economy. Normally, the targets of the reductions are revealed at a second moment, after the publication of the budget programming decree, on the 30th of the same month. The date is mandatory and is provided for in the LRF (Fiscal Responsibility Law).
The decree was published in an extra edition of the Diário Oficial da União on Friday night (30), before the first round of the elections. The act, signed by President Jair Bolsonaro, makes official the decision on which areas will be the target of the resource blockade, announced a week earlier.
Deciphering the document, full of annexes, numbers and rules of its own, is not trivial even for technicians specialized in the subject. To facilitate the understanding of the data, the Ministry of Economy usually publishes the table, indicating which agencies were the target of the blockade and whether the blockage fell on expenses of the ministries themselves or parliamentary amendments. This time, however, that didn’t happen.
As the government holds back the information, mixed complaints about funding cuts begin to surface in different government agencies.
On Wednesday (5), universities and federal institutes accused the blockade of R$ 2.4 billion in this year’s MEC (Ministry of Education) budget. The measure generated immediate repercussion on the networks and became the focus of negative advertisements for Bolsonaro’s campaign.
Only after that, the Economy and the MEC articulated a response. Education Minister Victor Godoy Veiga called for an interview this Thursday to downplay the decision and deny that there were any cuts, in addition to saying that the complaints from universities and institutes are politically motivated.
The Economy released a note informing that the new block in MEC budget allocations was R$ 51.3 million, concentrated in parliamentary amendments, and that the ministry itself can determine internal reallocations. Additional details, however, remain undisclosed.
THE Sheet found out with people from the government and Congress that the new blockade of R$ 2.6 billion focused almost entirely on the rapporteur’s amendments, used as a bargaining chip in political negotiations. The decision angered the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), who was left without amendments to please allies four months into the dispute for command of the House.
In recent days, the Ministry of Economy has been insistently sought for information. On Tuesday (4), the folder replied that “the details of the blocks are still under discussion”. This Thursday (6), the agency did not respond until the publication of this text.
The retention of official information also ends up giving the government time to try to find a solution to unlock the amendments without the back-and-forth being public.
In early September, the government had already angered allied parliamentarians with a confusion over the appeals of the rapporteur’s amendments.
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