Lula uses “secret budget” and more than R$ 46 billion to buy politicians’ support

We publish this unofficial translation of the article of A Nova Democracia published here.

The opportunistic government of Lula/Alckimin [autohor’s note: vice president of the Brazilian State] will assign R$ 9 billion of “secret budget” to guarantee the vote of congressmen in key projects for his administration. The funds will be added to the 46.3 billion reais destined to “parliamentary amendments” and will be released little by little by the Ministries of Cities and National Integration. This is precisely one of the points that Luiz Inácio criticized his opponent in the electoral farce: “anything goes” to win parliamentary support.

Paying attention to the corrupt members of congress, who in the last four years were graced with more than 117 billion reais, the current government will assign a record, 46.3 billion reais, for parliamentary amendments in 2023. The value even exceeds the values that Bolsonaro assigned to parliamentarians. If he continues as now, at the end of the four years of government, Lula will pay 185 billion reais to “his excellencies”.

In a context of political articulation difficulties between the reactionary coalition government with the “Center”, Luiz Inácio da Silva tries to use the billionaire funds to approve some of his agendas.

The origin of the money to be used actually indicates his desperation: it comes from an amount of R$ 15.5 billion of amendments of the previous government that were not used before December 31, 2022, the last day of Bolsonaro’s military government.

The spree continues

The “secret budget” was criticized by Luiz Inácio during the election campaign. “The biggest budgetary political waste of the country”, “this is a mockery, this is not democracy”, “we will solve it by talking to the deputies”- Lula denounced, affirmed and promised. What we see today, however, is more of the same.

So criticized (for being a mockery to the taxpayer, that is, the Brazilian people) the STF [Supreme Federal Court] declared the “secret budget” illegal. However, a political trickery prevented its end, in practice. Before, the funds were with the rubric “RP9”, which indicated that the funds intended for parliamentarians did not need to be indicated where they would go. After the STF’s decision, the billion-dollar sums passed on to politicians began to be designated under the signatures of “individual amendments” (where there is also no transparency) declared the “secret budget” illegal. Now, the government rescues them and gives the same them the same spurious and immoral purpose.

As you can see, it did not take Lula’s big mouth six months to abandon his criticism of the “give and take” and launch funds to lick the parliamentarians, on whom the future of his government depends.