“You know: the center is where those who are strong, with cunning, rule.”
The center has changed. It functioned as an invertebrate bloc of governability in a coalition contract with the Executive Branch, assuming the role of controlling the budget and dispersing public money. In 2026, he just wants to maintain that control, no matter who is elected. Not even for that and president of the Republic.
“Centrão is where a man has to have a hard neck and square hands.”
, and are its most common operators at the moment. Involved in allowances from Banco Master in exchange for a “Master Amendment”, from which they return with a suitcase full outside the X-ray, their great work was the parliamentary amendments.
They turned the presidential separation of powers into a kind of extortionate budgetary parliamentarism. They invented an inverted census vote in which citizens have difficulty electing someone who does not capture state money. And they do not pay, neither legally nor electorally, for democratic perversion.
“Centrão is this: you push it back, but suddenly it comes back around you on the sides.”
This architecture was designed to be opaque and circumvent the inspector. Financial hydraulics irrigate bases to guarantee re-election, to the detriment of universal public policies. They take money and planning capacity from health and education to buy tractors and finance allied NGOs, instruments disguised as campaign financing. Because the electoral fund is no longer enough.
“But the only way to leave the center is to take care of it from within.”
The STF’s frustrated attempts to control the disorder, which began under the leadership of Rosa Weber, have exposed the ingenious forms of parliamentary disobedience to judicial decisions. Disobedience disguised in technocratic jargon. This is where the STF recognizes its weakness, where it barks without being able to bite.
“Centrão is that, you know: everything is uncertain, everything is certain. Everything here is lost, everything here is found. The center is a huge wait. The center is everywhere.”
Parliamentarians became managers of parochial public policies. The transfer of money begins at tax collection and ends at the allied city hall. The path between origin and destination is a cloudy path, impossible to track and monitor.
“The real is not at the exit or at the arrival: it is available to us in the middle of the crossing.”
Its localism has nothing to do with the municipal competence to promote the “local interest”, according to article 30 of the Constitution. The interest is re-electoral. The center never embraced the constitutional project to promote rights and equality.
Instead of changing the Constitution, it focuses its efforts on parasitizing State funding. Because rights and equality depend on budget. If the center captures it, the constitutional promise ends as a promise. It is strategic to leave it on paper, at least it feeds hope.
“Centrão is when you least expect it. Centrão is within us.” I already anticipated Guimarães Rosa, 70 years ago.
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