Host of a meeting of governors, Jorginho Mello (PL), closed the event this Saturday (23) saying that the country needs “peace to work”.
“Brazil needs peace to work. In this firefight that we are experiencing there are no conditions. We have to make a much greater effort to be able to handle everything we have to do. If we had more peace and more tranquility, the We could earn much more”, said he, who is an ally of the former president (PL) and takes up opposition to the president’s federal government ().
Jorginho Mello did not directly reference Bolsonaro, who was indicted by , along with 36 people, in an investigation into a coup plot after the 2022 presidential election.
“May Brazil be able to go through more moments of clamor. I have never seen discord build anything. Not a little bridge, no hospital, no school. Confusion doesn’t build anything. It only destroys. We increasingly need to be a support point for suggestions so that people can resolve the difficulties. Brazil needs us”, continued the Santa Catarina native, during his speech.
The event promoted was the 12th meeting of Cosud (South and Southeast Integration Consortium). A press conference that was scheduled for this Saturday was canceled at the last minute, according to the organization, because the schedule was delayed and the participants had flights booked.
Most of the governors who are part of the consortium are Bolsonaro’s allies. But they did not publicly address the issue during the meeting, which began on Thursday (21). Two of them, the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), and Jorginho Mello.
Tarcísio left the event this Saturday without giving interviews.
On Friday (22), Jorginho published a photo hugging Bolsonaro. “Here in Santa Catarina, the commitment to the values that unite us is unshakable”, published the governor of Santa Catarina.
Also allies of Bolsonaro, the governors of Paraná, Ratinho Junior (PSD), and of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema (Novo), until now.
Cosud is made up of the seven states in the South and Southeast regions and all governors were at the event at some point, with the exception of Rio Grande do Sul (PSDB), who is traveling to Asia and was represented by the acting governor, Gabriel Souza (MDB) .
The closest member of the Lula government is Renato Casagrande, from Espírito Santo, affiliated with the PSB — the president’s allied party.
At the end of the meeting this Saturday, the governors released the “Florianópolis Charter”, the official document with the decisions and guidelines of the event’s thematic chambers. It included the proposal by the federal government.
“The proposal, in essence, compromises the fundamental principles of the federative pact by centralizing competencies that historically belong to the States, ignoring the regional specificities and autonomy that are pillars of our Republic”, says an excerpt from the Charter.
The document also mentioned the renegotiation of the states’ debt with the Union, indicating that the states are seeking to reduce the value.
On Friday, the governments of Santa Catarina and Paraná also indicated at the event an agreement on a legal case involving oil royalties that has been going on in the STF (Supreme Federal Court) for more than three decades.
Under the agreement, Paraná would transfer around R$300 million to Santa Catarina, through infrastructure works, to compensate for royalties not paid to Santa Catarina’s coffers.
The dispute, which also involves São Paulo, begins with a maritime route drawn up in 1986 by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) between the three states. In 1991, the projection into the sea of currency was challenged in the STF by the government of Santa Catarina, which claimed that oil fields were mistakenly outside the state’s waters.
Another announcement from Cosud was the start of feasibility studies on the creation of its own development bank. The initiative is being called Bancosud.
