Brazilian VP Mourão denies he will hand over presidential sash to Lula da Silva

Vice President Hamilton Mourão (Republicans), now senator-elect for Rio Grande do Sul, denied the possibility of handing the presidential sash to President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT, left) should current Chief Executive Jair Bolsonaro (PL, right) refuse to comply with the transition rite.

“The sash is passed from the outgoing president to the incoming president[…] I am not the president. I can’t put on that sash; take it off and hand it over,” said Mourão in an interview with Valor Econômico newspaper published this Wednesday (Nov. 16).

He evaluated that Bolsonaro’s commitment to hand over the sash would denote a “grand gesture” for an eventual rematch in the next election. “I think it would be a gesture of courage and challenge: “Here you go, turn around now, my brother. See you in 2026,” he stated.

When asked about the state of mind of the government with the end of the mandate, Mourão joked with a version of an excerpt taken from the rap song “Se Acabo” by the band The Beanuts, viralized on the TikTok platform.

“We’re in the rhythm of that little song: ‘If It’s Over’. We’re in the rhythm of cleaning tables and getting things ready. […] A new tenant is coming,” he said about the vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin (PSB).

Vice on the ticket that elected Bolsonaro in 2018, Mourão lost space in the government throughout the term and did not run again for the Jaburu Palace. The post was occupied by General Walter Braga Netto (PL).

According to him, Bolsonaro must work in the coming years to remain the main name of the opposition “when he emerges from the spiritual retreat,” in allusion to the silence adopted by the president since the end of the 2nd round.

PL offers the position to Bolsonaro and announces opposition to Lula.

Read other points from the interview:

INTERVENTION OF ARMED FORCES

Mourão denied the possibility of an intervention of the Armed Forces against the election result and defended a strategy of growth of the opposition with Bolsonaro’s political capital in the municipal elections of 2024.

“My message is clear: we must live to fight the next day. There is no point in wanting to die today. Otherwise, we will not live to fight tomorrow. Live to form a formidable force,” he said.

Besides Bolsonaro, he also put the governor-elect of São Paulo and his coreligionist Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans) as a possible candidate for the next presidential election.

PEC FOR NEW SPENDING CAP ‘PURA-TETO’

Mourão defined the proposal to permanently remove the resources of the Bolsa Família Program from the spending cap, studied by the elected government, as a “rape in the fiscal balance of the country”.

Alckmin should discuss the PEC with the Budget rapporteur this Wednesday

However, he evaluated that the spending cap inherited from the Michel Temer administration “is reaching its limit” and should make room for a new rule “that allows fiscal predictability”.

LULA DA SILVA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CONGRESS

The vice president said he believes that the Executive and Legislative branches should move closer to the political center in the coming years and said that the right, a majority in the legislature that will take office in the National Congress in 2023, is not a “grouping of rabid dogs.”

“We’ll have to get it right for them to get part of their agendas. The two sides will have to seek each other, always looking at Brazil,” he evaluated.

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