The Chamber is expected to vote on the Anti-Faction bill this Tuesday. The topic should be the only item on the session agenda. Rapporteur of the government text, opposition deputy Guilherme Derrite (PP-SP), has already presented four versions of the initiative. Faced with the back and forth and the possibility of a new version being published, the government and Bolsonarists are mobilizing to influence the rapporteur on possible changes.
On Monday, the president of the House, Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), stated in a post on social media that the vote would take place.
Government members remain dissatisfied with the role of the Federal Police (PF) and complain about issues related to the corporation’s financing, while part of the opposition wants the resumption of the equality between crimes committed by members of factions and those committed by terrorists.
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Motta had conversations, and separate meetings, throughout the second with Derrite, the Minister of Institutional Relations, Gleisi Hoffmann, and the leader of the PL in the Chamber, Sóstenes Cavalcante (RJ).
The rapporteur, the president of the Chamber, the minister and the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Ricardo Lewandowski, are expected to meet this Tuesday morning to try to reach an agreement on the project.
“He (Motta) has already decided that he will put it (to a vote). It is obvious that it is a complex matter, perhaps it would require more time, but the government is prepared to have this discussion”, said the minister after speaking with the president of the House.
The PL bench still wants to include a device that allows members of organized crime to be classified as terrorists. This prediction is not in the current version of Derrite’s report and Motta has signaled resistance to including the change.
Faced with resistance, Sóstenes has already announced that he may try to include the excerpt by voting on a highlight, with the analysis of a separate excerpt during the plenary analysis.
As columnist Lauro Jardim showed, the União Brasil bench agreed to vote on the project this Tuesday, but imposed a condition: the highlight that proposes the equality will have to be through a nominal vote.
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The Palácio do Planalto is trying to negotiate more time and wants at all costs to avoid defeat in a project that was born precisely in the Executive Branch.
The main problem highlighted by the government in relation to the fourth and so far most recent version of the report is, in addition to the financing of the PF, the characterization of the crime as a “criminal faction”, since there is a fear of legal uncertainty due to overlapping laws.
In an event held by the website Jota, Lewandowski criticized Derrite’s text, but admitted that the Lula government “is in the minority” in the discussion about the project in Congress.
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“Everyone knows that we are not in the majority in the Chamber, much less in the Senate. The prospects of us passing an alternative project are very small. What is the alternative that the government has today? (…) Either we reject Derrite’s project en bloc, or else we will start discussing, point by point, any amendments that we are going to make and, also in this aspect, we are in the minority”, highlighted Lewandowski.
The minister said that the current version of the text, the fourth presented by Derrite, still contains unconstitutionalities and stated that the rapporteur’s work lacked “legislative technique”.
In turn, the PL leader said he is trying to garner the support of Centrão parties, such as PP, Republicans, União Brasil and PSD to change the text and include the classification of factions as terrorism
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“I was with the governor (of Rio) Cláudio Castro at the Guanabara Palace, it was one of his requests to us, that we not give up on this equality. The governors are clamoring for this. If we do not convince the rapporteur, we will present a highlight and then the plenary will be sovereign.”
Derrite never presented a report that formally classifies the factions as terrorists, but in the first texts he released there were changes that equated the penalties for organized crime with those for terrorism. In doing so, the text also promoted changes to the Anti-Terrorism Law.
Faced with resistance from the government base, which feared foreign interventions and the risk of driving away investment, Derrite backed down and decided not to change any further part of the Anti-Terrorism Law. The President of the Chamber himself resists making the comparison.
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On Monday, Motta said on social media that “public security requires firmness, but also guarantees and institutional efficiency” and that the initiative is “the toughest response in the history of Parliament in confronting organized crime”.
Sóstenes said that the best path would be to postpone the vote, but declared that Motta’s decision to table the matter for this Tuesday must be respected.
In turn, the leader of the PT in the Chamber, Lindbergh Farias (RJ), asked for the postponement and also for Derrite to leave the rapporteur.
“The only responsible solution is to postpone the vote and immediately change the rapporteur, with a consensus name, resuming the government’s technical text. The country cannot face criminal organizations with legislative improvisation.”
