Marked in recent years by the increasing use of digital media, the campaign has now been limited to a roll call on radio and television, as a maneuver to stop the possibility of the opposition advancing.
The measure that imposed a gag on the publicity of candidates was known as , enacted 50 years ago by Ernesto Geisel and which entered political history as one of the great milestones of restriction and censorship in the country’s electoral dispute.
The rule that was in force from July 1, 1976 until the recent redemocratization of the election schedule on radio and TV for candidates for elected positions, which in the first round of 2026 is scheduled to begin on August 28 and be shown until October 1, three days before the election.
During the , control of the political system was fundamental to sustaining the regime, and the Falcão Law eliminated any possibility of discussion, attack on the government and advantage for opposition candidates.
According to the rules imposed, the election schedule broadcast on radio and television was limited to a roll call with the candidate’s name, number, CV and party, dictated by an interlocutor, in addition to a neutral photo of the candidate. No speeches or comments, at most information on locations for the rallies was allowed.
The law was promulgated by Geisel and, officially, had the justification of reducing inequalities between candidates in large municipalities, with wide access to television networks and radio stations, and small cities. The name derives from its creator, the then Minister of Justice Armando Falcão, a representative of the government’s hard line and who became known for the phrase “nothing to declare” when questioned by the press.
In practice, the new legislation was a response from the dictatorship to the results of the 1974 elections. At the time, the party opposing the regime, the MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement), won the majority of seats in the Federal Senate and almost half of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, causing a strong shock to the government’s strength in Parliament.
The objective with the Falcão Law was to prevent the Emedebistas from advancing further in the following elections and expanding criticisms that could destabilize the regime, such as famine, unemployment, inflation and salary squeeze, themes explored by the opposition and which guaranteed good results for the MDB.
“The Falcão Law is a confession of defeat for the military regime. The MDB only needed to win once for the government to change the rules of the game, emptying the elections from within”, says Rodrigo Prando, political scientist and professor at Mackenzie University. “By silencing political propaganda, the regime made its own gag visible.”
Experts remember that at that time social networks and their firepower in public opinion did not yet exist. “It was essential for the generals to maintain control over radio and television, which were the means of mass communication”, says political consultant Bruno Hoffmann, president of the Associative Club of Political Marketing Professionals.
The strategy did not work and the MDB gained numerically more votes than Arena, the dictatorship’s support party, in the 1978 elections. The government’s majority in Congress, however, was guaranteed thanks to another maneuver to contain the opposition.
Part of the composition in the Senate was elected that year indirectly and with names nominated by the military. They were the “bionic senators”, created from the electoral changes known as the “April Package”, in 1977.
“The ‘April Package’ maintained the electoral rite and was a way of demonstrating apparent normality in the country. But it guaranteed control of the entire political system by the military”, says professor Eduardo Zayat Chammas, doctor in social history from USP (University of São Paulo) and student of the military period.
According to Chammas, there was Geisel’s additional concern about containing the entry of activists from the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party), which was illegal, into the ranks of the MDB to contest elections.
Publicist Paulo de Tarso Santos explains what it was like to work with political marketing under the sword of the Falcão Law. In 1982, Tarso was one of the coordinators of the TV program of the PMDB (MDB’s successor party) candidate for the Government of São Paulo, André Franco Montoro.
“We were looking for loopholes in the legislation to improve the content of the programs and get our message across”, recalls the advertiser. One of the gaps that went unnoticed by the authors of the law is that there was no legal impediment for the candidate himself to be the speaker of the presentation text of his party’s candidates.
“We had Montoro speak for five minutes, criticizing the dictatorship and exalting democracy. A dribble that we made and that turned into a great political fact, even with the risk of our candidacy being revoked”, says Tarso, who later went to work on Lula’s (PT) campaign in 1989, and created the slogan “Lula Lá”.
Montoro was elected governor, and the Falcão Law lost its force along with the military dictatorship. From 1985 onwards, with the redemocratization of the country, the provisions on free advertising began to be regulated at each election. In 1997, law 9,504/97 was approved, which establishes the general rules of the Brazilian electoral system to this day.
