By Rodrigo Constantino
(Opinion) Brazilian Justice Gilmar Mendes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), decided on Sunday (Dec. 18) that the public resources needed to pay minimum income social programs – such as Auxílio Brasil, which will once again be called Bolsa Família – can be left out of the spending cap rule.
The decision was given on a preliminary basis, and the plenary of the STF will still analyze the issue.
In the order, the justice authorized the opening of extraordinary credit for the payment of the Bolsa Família to be made using a Provisional Measure.
In practice, the injunction allows the president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT, progressive-globalist), to continue paying the social program at R$600 in 2023 even if the PEC breaches the spending ceiling is not approved in Congress.
The information was published by the newspapers O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo.
Mendes responded to a request made by the Rede Sustentabilidade party to the STF.
The legend argued that the Auxílio Brasil represents the “existential minimum” that the Federal Constitution guarantees to Brazilians.
When Justice Gilmar Mendes is not granting habeas corpus or freeing corrupt people, he decides to legislate on his own, provoked by the Rede, a “party” that exists basically to be the dispatcher of the STF itself.
The majority of the judges of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) upheld the actions of four parties seeking to declare unconstitutional the amendments of the rapporteur – the so-called “secret budget” of the National Congress.
The majority of 6 to 4 was formed by the vote of Justice Ricardo Lewandowski this Monday (Dec. 19) in the morning when the trial was resumed. With that, the secret budget was overthrown by the STF.
The trial continues with the last vote by Gilmar Mendes.
The result represents the rejection, by the STF, of the approval in Congress last Friday (Dec. 16) of a new resolution whose objective was to give more transparency to the distribution of secret budget funds between deputies and senators.
It was an attempt to make the STF keep the so-called secret budget.
This all together represents a kind of checkmate for the STF/Lula da Silva in Congress.
Lula da Silva no longer needs the “Transition PEC” or the secret budget to have “governance”.
Its governance will be guaranteed by a few supreme justices, thus eliminating the need to share power with parliamentarians.
Congressman Marcel Van Hattem, who has been a firm voice against abuses of power, vented: “The Supreme Court has already closed the National Congress; only those who don’t want to see can’t see it.
The Judiciary decides on everything that falls to Parliament: a Minister has more power at the stroke of a pen than 594 parliamentarians. Legislature for what?”
Arthur Lira and Rodrigo Pacheco look comfortable in their decorative roles.
In Venezuela, the Supreme Court took over the powers of the Legislature, and that’s how it went.
When Bolsonaro was president, the STF created numerous obstacles and practically prevented him from governing.
Now that its candidate (Lula da Silva) is back on the crime scene, the STF is preparing to use activism in collusion with the Executive Branch so that he can rule without the need for Congress.
Voting for a senator or congressperson is worth almost nothing.
The parliamentarian can have his/her right to speak usurped by a stroke of the supreme minister, who decides to impose censorship without any legal basis.
Institutions have been undermined, and the Republic exists only in name; our democracy has become a farcical theater.
The coup did not come from Bolsonaro but from the STF itself. Faced with this sad reality, it is worth asking: what is Congress for?
Dictators have always advanced against the House of the People, and many have decided to close Congress.
The STF, in practice, does almost the same.
And the majority remain silent, passive, perhaps thinking only about their share in the division of the booty that Lula da Silva has already been promoting.
Brazil is left to moths. Or rather, termites, jackals, and hyenas.
With information from Gazeta do Povo