The parliamentarians of the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) have taken advantage of the visibility provided by the investigations to promote themselves. The number of followers of some of them has practically doubled, which could boost their electoral plans for 2026.
Data obtained by the report shows that the collegiate has maintained a relatively stable level of attention on the topic, although without the same power to guide the public debate as the operation that exposed Social Security fraud or the video that the deputy (PL-MG) released on the subject at the time.
The president of the collegiate, Carlos Viana (Podemos-MG), almost doubled his number of followers. Even allies of the federal government have achieved gains in visibility. The information is in a survey prepared by Bites consultancy at the request of Sheet.
The commission’s first meeting was the one that received the most attention from the networks. There was a surprise that day: the opposition had senator Carlos Viana (Podemos-MG) as president and deputy Alfredo Gaspar (União Brasil-AL) as rapporteur.
Viana went from 363.7 thousand followers at the beginning of the CPI to 696.4 thousand on October 13th. He wants to be re-elected as senator in 2026 and has a difficult campaign ahead.
The congressman ran for Government of Minas Gerais in 2022 and finished the first round with 7.23% of the votes. In 2024, he tried to be mayor of Belo Horizonte and obtained 1%. He was elected senator in 2018 in the Bolsonarist wave, but left the group.
Electoral polls have shown a reaction from Viana. The senator’s opponents believe behind the scenes that the visibility provided by the CPI presidency increases his potential electorate.
The caveat is whether this gain will last until October 2026, when the election will be held, as the CPI will end in March.
The rapporteur, Alfredo Gaspar, passed from 358.1 thousand followers to 541.7 thousand (51% growth). He is tipped to run for a senator’s seat. In 2020, he ran for Mayor of Maceió, went to the second round and obtained 41.26% of the votes.
Gaspar usually makes direct accusations against CPI deponents during meetings. He also started showing slides where his name appears and conducting interrogations standing up instead of sitting, as is more common in committees. Everything is transmitted on video.
The rapporteur’s stance was questioned at the October 6 meeting. “Each of us parliamentarians, when we speak, can we order our name to be highlighted there?”, said the deputy (-RS).
“It is using the CPMI to carry out electoral propaganda”, declared deputy Alencar Santana (PT-SP). President of the collegiate, Viana said that the other members could do the same. Gaspar did not comment at the time.
Members of the CPI and advisors to congressmen interviewed by the report privately state that the moments of clash or strong words against the deponents are the ones that most engage voters. This logic would even work for government supporters, whose main mission in the collegiate is to defend management.
Alencar Santana, for example, had one of the CPI’s most interacted posts so far, with 90,000 likes on Instagram. This is a video in which the CGU minister, Vinícius Carvalho, discusses his testimony with the senator (União Brasil-PR).
The most liked post on the CPI so far, according to the survey, is from the opponent (Novo-RS), with 438 thousand.
The scandal over Operation No Discount on April 23rd. That day, the number of mentions of the topic was close to 300 thousand considering open social networks — that is, without counting private message exchanges.
Mentions dropped to around 200,000 a day by May 7th. When Nikolas Ferreira, mentions of the subject were close to 350 thousand.
Since the CPI was installed on August 20, two meetings have been held per week. According to data from Bites, the number of mentions of the topic on social media varies from 57 thousand to 127 thousand per day.
Bites’ technical director, André Eler, said that the issue of INSS fraud remains in the public debate because it is an easy-to-understand topic and, mainly, because of its effective impact on the lives of beneficiaries.
He also mentioned the ability of right-wing groups to keep the issue high in an attempt to wear down the Lula government. These factors would enable CPI members to gain image among the electorate.
“We are talking about people who do not have projection on more national issues and do not usually have as much protagonism. When a topic like this appears, they somehow manage to make the ideas resonate”, declared Eler.
