New Rio Mayor Announces Liberal Recipe to Confront Predecessor’s “Perverse Legacy”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A liberal recipe to remedy Marcelo Crivella’s “perverse legacy,” anti-racist management, new measures against Covid-19, and the fight against corruption. This was the emphasis of Rio de Janeiro‘s new Mayor Eduardo Paes‘ speech as he took office for his third term on Friday.

He took control of the capital of Rio de Janeiro replacing Crivella, whose administration in recent years has been considered chaotic and contemptuous of local culture. However, Paes will not be relying on the economic bonanza of his first term (2009-2012) nor on the billions of investments made for the Olympics that marked his second term (2013-2016).

In addition to the current problems Crivella left behind, the new Mayor will also have to deal with the Olympic legacy he himself left behind, which includes some poorly executed urban construction works.

Paes has pledged that he will not “in any way look back and complain about a cursed legacy”. The speech was a clear reference to Crivella, who for four years repeated that he had been given a cursed legacy. Back in the City Hall, Paes states that his Government “will look ahead” and “face the problems”, without “losing its direction with them”.

But he was assertive in classifying the Crivella administration: “Never in the history of the city of Rio has a Mayor received from his predecessor such a perverse legacy.”

Paes took over immediately, promoting an intervention in the healthcare area and publishing 44 decrees in the economic area aimed at promoting spending cuts and suspending audit contracts.

The decrees, already published in the Municipal Gazette, include cuts in upper level management positions, suspension of public bids, and a ban on civil servants using official cars to travel to and from work, among other measures. A fiscal emergency law, a municipal pension reform, and a tax reform are also being prepared.

In his speech, Paes mentioned “civil servants awaiting payment, 15 payrolls for next year and a colossal fiscal challenge that reaches the R$10 billion mark”. Thus, the focus of his administration will be “to restore the city’s cash flow, which is currently zeroed”, in addition to “recovering the 2016 investment grade”.

The measures will be implemented by his Treasury secretary Pedro Paulo. In an interview, he said that the situation in the health area is even more serious, which prompted intervention in the sector. “We need to open this black box because it is expensive and lacks transparency. It is the only municipal entity whose payroll cost no one knows, it is a secret payroll,” he said.

The focus of his economic policy will be on fiscal adjustment, attracting investments, creating jobs. The new administration intends to submit a tax reform bill with the aim of “improving the lives of those who want to invest in Rio and stop subsidies that are no longer needed,” said Paes in his speech.

Regarding the fiscal emergency bill, the Mayor spoke of “de-indexing contracts, de-earmarking revenue, disengaging expenses and expanding the fiscal responsibility framework, “building “the foundations of a new legal framework that will never again allow any Mayor to destroy our city’s accounts.”

Among other more pressing measures, the Mayor announced the opening of 343 new hospital beds for the treatment of infected patients. Paes also announced the creation of a committee of specialists “mainly comprised of people from outside City Hall,” in addition to an “emergency operations center running within the capital’s Operations Center”. He stated that it will provide “full transparency to the occupancy of hospital beds in SUS (National Health System) facilities”.

Paes also vowed to form an “anti-racist government,” as “this Brazilian wound and this debt we all have with centuries of racism must be overcome once and for all.” He said he has set up a “young and new-faced secretariat” to address these “new times and new challenges,” and that his government will be “disruptive and transformative”.

Fight against corruption

With the history of ex-governors’ imprisonments, most recently that of Crivella, Paes took over the command of Rio de Janeiro’s capital promising “a radical change in public administration practices”. He wants Rio “to become a paradigm in the ways of doing politics and managing public affairs, a national reference in transparency, integrity and the fight against corruption.”

However, the Mayor is himself a defendant in three criminal proceedings, two of them in the Electoral Court and the other in Federal Court. He is charged with receiving slush funds from Odebrecht in the 2008 and 2012 election campaigns, in addition to favoring the  company throughout his two prior terms.

The last time he became a defendant, in September this year, Paes was the subject of a search and seizure warrant, and was charged by the Electoral Prosecutor’s Office for the crimes of passive corruption, money laundering, and electoral false witness. In another criminal proceeding, under Lava Jato, he is accused of benefiting the building company Queiroz Galvão in the work of the Deodoro Sports Complex, built for the Olympics. He denies all charges.

In all, 74 decrees were published in the Municipal Gazette on Friday. Among them is the establishment of a Preliminary Investigation Committee to ascertain alleged irregularities in the Municipality during the Crivella administration. The now ex-Mayor was remanded in custody on December 22nd and is under house arrest. According to the Rio Prosecutor’s Office, entrepreneurs paid to have access to contracts and to receive amounts owed by the municipal administration, in a scheme nicknamed “QG da Propina” (Kickback HQ).

In addition, the Paes administration set up another committee to investigate potential irregularities in the so-called “Guardiões de Crivella” (Guardians of Crivella), a group of advisors paid to attack journalists outside hospitals and thus hinder the investigation of complaints in the health area.

One of the decrees signed on Friday also creates a 100-day plan, during which the current administration promises to review the law that raised the IPTU (Urban Property Tax), prepare the family clinics for vaccination against Covid-19, place municipal guards in all BRT [bur rapid transit] stations and submit a plan to complete the works on the Transbrasil bus corridor.

Despite references to the Crivella administration, the tone of his speech was conciliatory and contained nods to the left-wing opposition led by the PSOL party, which has the largest bench of city councilors along with DEM, the mayor’s party. “I am well aware that a group of political forces united around my victory in the second round. (…) I know that many of these forces think differently from me on a wide variety of issues,” he said. “But my victory showed that it is possible to establish minimal consensus when the interests of society are jeopardized.”

The Mayor promised a relationship of “dialogue and attentiveness” with the opposition, stating that “the power of contradiction must be construed as something positive that will add to success and prevent mistakes.” With respect to those who did not vote for him, he also stated that he will form a government “for all Rio citizens,” listening to “all voices of such a large and diverse city.”

Source: El País