Party leaders ended 2023 with warnings to Planalto that the Chamber had preference and that the relationship needs to change in 2024
The group of members of the Federal Senate will start 2024 with fewer parties than in 2023. Cidadania, which in 2023 had 1 representative in the Upper House, now has no more names after Alessandro Vieira (SE) went to MDB. Pros, incorporated into Solidariedade in February last year, also had a vacancy, but Zenaide Maia (RN) went to the PSD. This year, PSD, PL and MDB will be the biggest forces among the senators. Together, the 3 acronyms account for 38 of the 81 senators.
The president's support base Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the Senate was more stable in 2023 than that of the Chamber. But at the end of last year, Lula supporters were dissatisfied with the government's political articulation. There are complaints that there are more concessions to deputies than to senators. Planalto's lack of dialogue is also expressed by disgruntled leaders.
The Executive managed to approve relevant proposals in the economic area, but needed to negotiate until the final stretch of each vote. Of the 12 parties represented in the Senate, 8 have ministries on the Esplanada de Lula. However, the changes in the Esplanada to allocate representatives from the PP and the Republicans – Centrão parties, a group without a clear ideological color that adheres to the most different governments – made in September, did not change Lula's support in the Upper House.
The assessment within the PP and the Republicans is that they were nominations from the Chamber benches and there is no support from the senators.
Despite this, the Power360 it was found that the PT member has the support within the Senate of 51 of the 81 senators, as show the following infographic:
Evidently, the government reduces its number of allies depending on the topic. The Congress elected in 2022 is more conservative than in recent years and although the Senate election was only for a third of the senators, right-wing congressmen grew in the House. As mentioned at the beginning of this report, the PL, by the former president Jair Bolsonaro, is the 2nd largest party in the House, with 12 senators. Customary agendas have less support while agendas in the economic area are “more embraced” by congressmen.
SENATORS' COMPLAINTS
In addition to complaining about the government's coordination, senators publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the Chamber of Deputies during 2023. The complaint was that projects spent a lot of time in the Lower House and when they reached the Senate, there was a very short period of time for senators to be able to analyze and vote. Criticism of deputies should continue in 2024 as one of the reasons for the friction between the two houses is the disagreement over the rite of MPs (provisional measures).
At the beginning of the pandemic, due to health restrictions, the STF (Supreme Federal Court) gave a kind of safe-conduct for Congress to skip the stage of joint committees in the analysis of MPs while the covid health emergency lasted.
The express rite was agreed in a joint act signed by the Chamber and the Senate on March 31, 2020. The measure increased the power of the president of the Chamber over the government's legislative agenda, since, in this regime, it was exclusively up to him to choose the rapporteur provisional measures and submit them for voting.
Senators started to complain that the MPs spent a long time under the analysis of the deputies and arrived for the Senate review close to expiring.
In February 2023, the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG) led a meeting of the Senate steering committee that decided unilaterally for the return of the mixed commissions to analyze the MPs that Lula had signed since January 1, 2023.
The Senate leadership agreement, however, was never valid. As it was a joint act, it needed the signature of the President of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), which did not sign.
The discussion continued throughout the year and made it difficult for the Lula government to send MPs to Congress. In an agreement in the middle of the year between the PT member and Lira, the government exchanged the sending of MPs for PLs (bills). Only very urgent projects were sent as MP and had mixed committees.
Thus, the friction was softened and Lira and Pacheco did not discuss in the 2nd semester a solution to the disagreement between the two. There is no debate on the radar at the beginning of 2024 on either side to reach a consensus on the issue in the short term. .
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