How do we know we are in? Simple: the amnesty season for party accounts has begun.
Last Tuesday (19), the Chamber of Deputies approved PL 4822/2025, a type of mini-electoral reform that relaxes accountability rules. The text now heads to the Senate, where it must meet the same fate as: the cemetery.
The project is surgical in strategy: it does not eliminate inspection, it just makes it impossible. The TSE will have one year to issue an opinion on financial statements; otherwise, they will be automatically approved. The limitation period drops from five to three years. “They know that the Electoral Court cannot meet these deadlines. Everything is supposed to be left without judgment”, says Marcelo Issa, co-founder of the Party Transparency Movement.
Auditing the accounts would also be made impossible by restricting the scope of the analysis. In practice, the TSE will only be able to do a “face check” of the financial statements: checking whether the money came from prohibited sources, whether suppliers have regular CNPJ numbers and whether the minimum percentages were formally respected.
Today, the court can request supporting documents. For example, if a party hired a consultancy, it could ask for the report, and thus already found reports that were plagiarism from master’s theses. According to the new text, parties would only need to deliver additional documents if there is a prior indication of the irregularity being investigated, with “necessary mention of the violated article of law”. Translation: the TSE will only be able to investigate irregularities after knowing exactly which irregularity occurred.
The use of the party fund, made up of public resources, would be authorized to pay fines for irregularities committed by the parties themselves. “The guy barely uses the money, he is fined and tried and public money will pay?”, asked deputy Fernanda Melchionna (PSOL-RS) during the vote. Mergers between parties would start to function as a debt extinguishing mechanism. “The party feeds on public money, commits irregularities of all kinds, and has a merger and nothing from the rotten party passes to the new party”, warned Adriana Ventura (Novo-SP).
The text also creates a privilege without equivalent in the legal system: parties would be treated differently from companies and associations in tax, criminal and administrative matters, with national, state and municipal directories treated as separate legal entities. Any parent company is responsible for the branch; party, no more.
To make matters worse, these relaxations are retroactive. They apply immediately to ongoing cases that have not yet become final.
There are many other absurdities that do not fit here, it is worth reading Agência Câmara e.
The legislative process followed the characteristic pattern: rushed and without any transparency. It sat for almost a year and, “suddenly”, there was a designated rapporteur and an urgent vote on the same day. The text was not even available to parliamentarians before the vote.
The initial project was written by deputies Pedro Lucas (União-MA), Adolfo Viana (PSDB-BA) and Isnaldo Bulhões Jr. (MDB-AL); the final approved text was reported by Rodrigo Gambale (Pode-SP). The Union, PP, PSD, Republicans, MDB, PSDB, Citizenship, Podemos, PT, PC do B, PV, PSB voted in favor. Only PSOL, Rede, PL, Missão and Novo voted against.
The Blindagem PEC showed that . PL 4,822 reaches the Senate in this context. The difference is that the Blindagem PEC protected parliamentarians from criminal investigations, something visible and mobilizing. This project is more opaque: it protects parties from audits of public money at a technical level that requires effort to understand. This design is part of the strategy.
It’s up to the Senate to bury him. And for civil society to press for the adoption of , of , so that this form of untimely and undemocratic action by the people’s house ceases.
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