The future belongs to you. It is up to the , on Wednesday (8), to decide the direction of the policy of the , a state that is in the throes of an unprecedented institutional crisis.
Like Palácio das Laranjeiras, the court will judge whether the election for the buffer mandate will be direct or indirect. For now, the president of the Court of Justice, , remains in charge of the Rio de Janeiro Executive. This is a decision made by the minister, also by the STF.
Political scientists interviewed by Sheet state that they contribute to the current scenario of legal uncertainty in the state. According to them, however, the reasons for the current crisis precede the disintegration of the succession line. After all, the hegemony of — at the time PMDB — in the state did not give way to another group with the same structure. In contrast, they say, the former governor’s mandate () was marked by political fragility, which paved the way for the state of Rio de Janeiro’s power.
“Castro’s group did not establish itself in power, because he was a weak figure, without a track record, with a hesitant position in relation to Bolsonarism and who allowed corruption in his government”, says Paulo Henrique Cassimiro, professor of political science at Uerj (State University of Rio de Janeiro).
Cassimiro says that the dismantling of Castro and his allies, in an election year, is a symptom that the vacuum left by the MDB was not filled.
The party governed Rio for 12 years, with the governments of Luiz Fernando Pezão — not counting the Moreira Franco era, in the last century. During this period, this political group strengthened with the alliance maintained with the PT governments, which resulted, among other things, in the holding of the 2016 Olympics. But the Cabral and Pezão of the polls; the former mayor survived, but did not.
According to the expert, Castro never had equivalent proximity to Bolsonaro, outsourcing his mandate’s agenda to allies who supported him in power. In 2019, Wilson Witzel, an outsider at the time in the PSC, took over the state, . Castro, then vice-governor and equally unknown, went on to occupy Laranjeiras, being re-elected, in the first round, with almost 60% of the votes. The current crisis took on Kafkaesque contours, a month ago, and was started by the politician himself.
It’s better to go step by step: on the eve of the trial in the (Superior Electoral Court) that could revoke your mandate. He sought to protect his chances of running for the Senate and maintain influence over the course of the indirect election — in fact, the TSE declared him ineligible, understanding that he committed political and economic abuse in the 2022 election.
Castro’s idea was to let a first-time ally, (), former president of Alerj (Rio de Janeiro’s Legislative Assembly), take over the leadership of the Executive, given that vice-governor Thiago Pampolha had resigned, in May, to occupy a seat at the TCE (State Audit Court).
It turns out that he has been away from Alerj since December, under suspicion of participating in the leak of information about the operation that arrested former deputy TH Joias, linked to Comando Vermelho. At that moment, unpredictability increased when the minister called for an indirect election in the event of a double vacancy.
The action was presented by the PSD, Paes’ party that is a pre-candidate for government. “The STF is the major producer of legal uncertainty in this country since Lava Jato”, says Cassimiro.
Fux ordered a secret vote to choose the governor and respect the six-month disqualification period — previously, public office holders had to leave their positions up to 24 hours before the dispute. In the meantime, deputies even held a quick vote to elect a new president of the Assembly, but the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro annulled the initiative.
According to Mayra Goulart, professor of political science at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), the crisis exposes Castro’s fragility as the root cause of his mandate. “He did not have the size of a governor of Rio, neither in terms of his own electoral base, nor in terms of space within a party, not to mention alliances with the political elite.”
A more powerful leader, says Goulart, would have more voters, allies and even jurists willing to defend him. “Castro was supported in a world biased to the right and had great difficulty communicating with the population throughout his term in office.”
Another difficulty for the former governor was Bolsonarism’s distrust of him. He even said that he was uncomfortable with the Bolsonarista label and had friction with the former president during the pandemic.
Author of the master’s thesis “The influence of Bolsonarism in municipal elections in Baixada Fluminense”, researcher Isabel Uchôa, from UFFRJ (Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro), states that the rise of the right did not take the state away from the control of old families who, in their strongholds, used Bolsonarist rhetoric more to give vent to anti-PTism.
“Castro was not worried about the Bolsonarist identification at all times. They are figures who play the political game as necessary. He was aligned with Bolsonarism, but it was never limited to that”, says Uchôa.
A symbol city of the country and former federal capital, the municipality of Rio de Janeiro retreats into its landscape, given the socioeconomic and cultural decline of the state. This is due, above all, to police corruption and organized crime.
The effects can be felt in almost all areas, from services to the cultural scene. “The fragility of traditional productive dynamics feeds back into politics, socioeconomic decay exposes politics to organized crime”, says Goulart.
Cassimiro prefers a historical approach, saying that the merger of the state of Guanabara with the state of Rio de Janeiro, during the dictatorship, went wrong. For him, the capital needed to absorb a lot of problems from the state, including the lack of economic activity in other municipalities.
“In the case of the state of Rio, socioeconomic decay produces the political crisis. In the case of the capital, political decadence, because it was previously the Federal District, generates the economic crisis, after the merger with a dead state. The state of Rio de Janeiro is ungovernable.”
