After the event on Avenida Paulista promoted by (), the governor of Minas Gerais, (Novo), reaches the end of the former president’s year on suspicion of participation in a coup d’état plan orchestrated in 2022.
This year, the governor followed one from the last presidential elections, when he began to send out exchanged signals, between nods and distancing, about his relationship with Bolsonarism.
In July, when commenting on the ex-president’s indictment in the case, Zema said that the relationship between them was good and came to the ex-president’s defense.
In the same month, he stated in an interview with CNN that he saw Bolsonaro’s name as ideal to represent the right in 2026 and said that the former president’s ineligibility could be reversed.
In the municipal elections, however, when supporting Bruno Engler (PL), Zema did not participate in the campaign events.
In the first round, the governor supported Mauro Tramonte (Republicans), who came in third place.
In the second, he recorded a video asking Engler for a vote, but chose to do so for the country instead of participating in the agendas of the Bolsonarista name for the city hall of the capital of Minas Gerais, which ().
At the end of the year, the governor held a meeting with the PL’s Minas Gerais bench to smooth out rough edges.
Despite being the base of the government in the Legislative Assembly, the party’s state deputies usually vote against the management on issues related to public security, mainly on the readjustment of employees in the area — the main topic of last week’s meeting.
Despite not involving direct discussions about 2026, the meeting may have served to bring the governor closer to the party.
Today, Zema says he has two commitments for the coming years: supporting the construction of a center-right candidacy for the Presidency –– and working to win vice-governor Mateus Simões (Novo).
If he was absent from Bolsonaro’s visits, Zema also did not participate in the president’s () in 2024 in the state.
The only time the two met in Minas, after a request from the governor to discuss with the agent solutions for the agreement relating to the Mariana tragedy, which occurred in 2015, and for the state’s debt with the Union.
The first would be resolved in November, in a . The second, a historical problem in the state that led to the postponement of civil servants’ salaries and transfers to municipalities during the administration of Fernando Pimentel (PT), made progress this year.
After obtaining successive decisions from the (Supreme Federal Court) to postpone the payment of the debt, currently worth around R$ 165 billion, the Zema government began to honor the due dates in October. It was thanks to an agreement with the Union approved by the Supreme Court that, in practice, placed the state under the Tax Recovery Regime (RRF).
The solution preferred by the government, however, became the state debt renegotiation program, which was .
The proposal from the president of , (PSD), and adopted by the president of the state Assembly, Tadeu Leite (MDB), was designed especially for Minas. , the miners are those who have the most assets to hand over to the Union in exchange for the debt discount.
“The debts of the states, especially that of Minas, have never received adequate treatment. There is no way you can have a debt corrected by IPCA plus 4 [por cento, ao ano] if the economy never grows 4% on average. It’s very basic mathematics”, said the governor in a meeting with journalists in December.
The project approved in Congress also finds more consensus in the Assembly than the RRF. The project to join the regime, sent in 2019, was disbanded, but even so it was not approved in two rounds.
Despite accumulating splits in votes, the government’s base in the Assembly guaranteed victories for Zema this year, such as in the project that changed the contribution of civil servants to the pension system itself.
In 2025, it must pass a new test: the privatization projects of the state-owned energy and sanitation companies, Cemig and Copasa, campaign proposals from the governor’s first term. For now, the reading in the Assembly and in the government itself is that .
