In a seminar promoted by the newspaper in collaboration with the Instituto Não Accept Corrupção, specialists criticize the capture of public resources by the interests of the political class
The persistent capture of public resources by parliamentary interests – the secret budget – reveals the need for the new government to promote a break with this type of mechanism, underline the experts who attended the seventh seminar “Pathways against corruption”, held by the Stage in collaboration with the Institute I do not accept corruption.
The lawyer of the Public Prosecutor of the Accounts of San Paolo, Élida Graziano, the researcher of the University of Lugano, in Switzerland, Fabiano Angélico, and the head of the Stage in Brasilia, Leonêncio Nossa, defended that the rapporteur’s amendments damage the implementation of public policies.
According to analysts, saving the budget must go through planning, obedience to the institutions and maximum transparency. They participated in a panel mediated by journalist Kátia Brembatti, director of the Stage Verification and president of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji).
For Élida Graziano, the origin of corruption comes from a weakness in planning. “A society that doesn’t plan accepts no outcome,” she said. You believe that the budget law should be considered the most important law in the country.
“The crux of the challenge is the legitimate ordering of priorities. We have a consensus diagnosis of our problems, we have a good prognostic framework. The problem is identifying what comes first, because MPs have gotten used to creating difficulties to sell ease,” he said. declared.
As shown the Stageconcurrently with the analysis of the constitutionality of the secret budget by the Federal Court (STF), parliamentarians are studying changes to the budget rules to prevent the mechanism from being foreclosed by the Court.
Next year’s draft budget reserves R$ 19.4 billion for these amendments. President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is negotiating the formation of a foundation in Congress and has already been warned that, without the secret budget, it will be difficult for him to approve the proposed amendment to the Constitution (PEC) of the Transitional for pay the expenses of the Bolsa Familia.
“The cost of bargaining is now in PEC, which is why they ask for much more,” Graziano said. “The transaction cost of Congress has become more expensive than the cap (of expenditures), because the cap now has to edge up in increasingly episodic ways. They are intermediaries in the budget debate,” he added.
Fabiano Angélico, on the other hand, cited three groups of actors whose articulation and demand for resources can facilitate mechanisms such as the secret budget: municipalities, the legislature and political parties.
At the municipal level, Angélico believes that the federative pact needs to be reviewed, in order to avoid uncontrolled spending by municipalities, whose autonomy without transparency can lead to corruption and inefficiency. He mentions, for example, the need for town halls for resources. As revealed the Stagemuch of the secret budget is distributed to local councils to strengthen parliamentary constituencies.
In the case of the legislature, Angélico mentions the increase in the discretionary power of the board of directors of the National Congress which, according to him, has been strengthened in an exacerbated way. “For us, to elect the president of the Chamber and of the Senate, greater transparency is needed. In this way (without an inspection) there are elements who will then negotiate in the dark with the mayors”, he said.
Regarding the secret budget, the researcher underlines that the non-transparent transfer of the rapporteur’s amendments has become a symbol of corruption and institutionalized vote buying leading to inefficiency of public policies.
Leonêncio Nossa agrees and indicates the mechanism as “a serious damage to the democratic system”. “When this money is transferred without criteria, the role of transferring or distributing the money is removed from the Executive, obsolete social public policies are made which guaranteed the improvement of socio-economic indicators,” he said.
Supervision
In another panel of the seminar, the auditor of the external control of the Court of Auditors of the State of Sergipe, Ismar Viana, the federal deputy Israel Batista and the associate professor of law at the USP, José Maurício Conti, discussed PLP79/2022, which establishes a symmetry in the way federal, state and municipal audits are controlled.
The regulations also cover internal control rules, the national SUS audit system and social control, when the company controls the administration of public resources.
As reported by Batista, the project plans to standardize the organization and supervision of the courts, establishing, for example, a maximum term of 90 days for the annual accounts of the rulers to be judged.
“This means that it will provide traceability for the audits and inspections that take place in the States. We will ensure compatibility. The PLP defines that the Court of Auditors will set a standard for the exposure of this data, and therefore it will be possible to work together because they speak the same language,” he said. Courts currently follow state laws, which results in different courses of action.
Without these unified rules, according to the deputy, the States manage to circumvent the limit on personnel expenses, mask debt data and even mandatory investment expenses.
“Today we don’t conceive of a trial in which the judge tells the prosecutor how he should act or the investigator how he should investigate,” compared Ismar Batista. He reiterates that the PLP does not subordinate the regional courts to the TCU. “The courts remain autonomous. What is wanted is to remove this concern. There is a crisis of legitimacy due to a malfunction. What is wanted is for them to function within a model symmetric to the TCU, this will not imply a violation of the federal law autonomy”, completed.
Experts argue that, with defined symmetry, society can control more effectively. The project also provides that only civil servants can take on supervisory positions, now appointed through the appointment of councilors and, often, appointed by politicians.
José Conti believes that the current model has isolated the courts and created separate organizations with their own rules, which would be incompatible with the reality in Brazil, where the same company participates in tenders in different states.
“It is necessary that they have minimum rules, and this discretionary possibility must be reduced so as not to generate excesses and that it does not have an isolated action, which results in the lack of communication possibilities,” he added.
The debates continue this Thursday in the auditorium of Stage and are also transmitted by Estadao TV🇧🇷 The seminar takes place virtually on Friday. The event takes place in commemoration of the International Anti-Corruption Day, which is celebrated this Friday 9.
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Source: Terra
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
