By 6 votes to 5, Brazilian Supreme Court considers “secret budget” unconstitutional

By 6 votes to 5, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF) considered unconstitutional the budget rapporteur’s amendments, the so-called RP9, better known as secret budget. 

The court finalized today (19) the judgment of actions by the Cidadania, PSB, PSOL and PV parties, which understand that the RP9 amendments are illegal and are not provided for in the Constitution.

Until the last day 15, when the trial was suspended, the score was 5 votes to 4 against the secret budget. 

The President of the STF and rapporteur for the actions, Justice Rosa Weber, voted for the unconstitutionality of the RP9 amendments and was followed by Justices Edson Fachin, Luís Roberto Barroso, Luiz Fux and Cármen Lúcia. She considered that the model harms the distribution of resources, the right of parliamentarians to participate in the adjustment of the Budget and society, by making it difficult to obtain information on the application of money.

Justices Alexandre de Moraes, Dias Toffoli and Nunes Marques voted for the possibility of adopting the amendments, but with the application of proportional forms of distribution and inspection. And Justice André Mendonça voted to maintain the rapporteur’s amendments, understanding that the political decision on the destination of budgetary resources rests with the Legislature.

After the suspension of the judgment, the National Congress approved a resolution that changes the rules of resources distributed by rapporteur’s amendments to make these transfers more transparent to society.

This Monday (19), when casting his vote, Justice Ricardo Lewandowski said that the measure presented advances to “mitigate the enormous discretion that the rapporteur has in the distribution of budgetary resources”. However, for him, the changes are still not in accordance with the constitutional parameters of transparency. 

Justice Gilmar Mendes, the last to vote, judged the actions partially valid and assessed that, despite the need to ensure more transparency, it is not possible to simply declare unconstitutional the possibility of rapporteur amendments predicting expenses, restricting it to technical adjustments.

The secret budget nickname arose from the lack of identification of parliamentarians who indicated the application of such resources. Thus, according to critics of the RP9, the amendments are used by the Federal Executive to co-opt parliamentarians to vote on matters of their interest in exchange for direct allocations to public bodies. The resources planned for 2023 are around R$19 billion.

With information from Gazeta Brasil