SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – When Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro took office in January, he promised a conservative shift in customs while adopting a more liberal stance in the economy. To do so, the president has been signing an excessive number of decrees and executive measures, according to a group known as Pact for Democracy.
“Legislating through decrees, belittling and subjugating the role of the legislature in a democratic regime, is a way of undermining democracy from within,” says the statement issued by the non-governmental platform which has over 120 entities and thousands of followers.
The use of decrees issued by the Executive is a common practice in Brazil. However, according to these entities, president Bolsonaro is extrapolating “the powers of the executive branch”, and taking over the attributes usually given to the people’s representatives in Congress.
“This is the case of the decree that extinguishes the public policy councils, the one that provides for the permission to carry firearms, as well as the text that deals with the appointment of the rectors of federal educational institutions. Regardless of the evaluations regarding the content of the decrees, the concern lies mainly with the form.”
Debates like these, says the Pact, should be discussed between the elected representatives in Congress and not be decided by “the aspiration of a single individual”.
Although there is no limit to the number of decrees that the Chief Executive can issue, Brazil’s Constitution does not allow the Chief Executive to create a new rule by decree, but only to regulate the enforcement of a law.
With less-than-solid support in Congress, a branch of which he was a member for twenty-seven years, President Bolsonaro has used decrees to fulfill campaign promises and push through issues that he feels are stalled in Congress.
“With the pen, I have much more power than you,” president Bolsonaro told the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, in May, adding: “Although you make the laws, I have the power to make a decree.”
According to Emilio Peluzo Meyer, a law professor at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), the excessive number of decrees and executive orders weakens democratic rule by putting at risk the “separation of powers and the role of mutual oversight, basic guarantees for the Democratic Rule of Law”.
“The dangers that a decree can bring to democracy can be compared to the excess power sometimes conferred on the figure of a president, even those democratically elected,” said Meyer in an article published by the university’s Study Center on Transition of Justice.
According to the professor, for someone who has “avoided debating” with lawmakers since he took office, the decrees issued by president Bolsonaro are “desperate attempts to demonstrate efficiency by presenting hasty and thoughtless solutions that endanger Brazilian democracy.”
In all, since January 1st, 2019 through August 28th, President Bolsonaro issued 333 decrees.
Among them were two different decrees that expanded the right of citizens to possess weapons in the country. In May, Bolsonaro signed a decree which would ease requirements for those wishing to own a gun and expanded the types of weapons allowed to be purchased by citizens. The decree was rejected in Congress, leading president Bolsonaro to issue another similar one in June.
The high number of decrees issued by president Bolsonaro has also received criticism from federal lawmakers, who were elected by the people to create laws. PSOL party Chamber of Deputies leader, Ivan Valente, says Bolsonaro is trying to rule by decree and warns of this “imperial power”.
“He is trying to rule by decree, and it suffocates the legislature,” Valente stated in his social media.
According to data collected by The Rio Times, president Bolsonaro is only behind former president Fernando Collor de Mello in the number of decrees issued during the first semester in office.
From waiving visa requirements for citizens of the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Australia to enter Brazil, to ending daylight savings time, to altering taxes on industrialized products, Brazil’s president has resorted to issuing decrees to speed up measures which he believes are important and must be adopted immediately.
And despite the criticism, coming from Congress as well as non-governmental groups, analysts say Brazil’s Chief Executive has yet to signal that he will be slowing down in relation to these decrees, which could send him on a collision course with the Legislative Branch.