By Camilo Diniz
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers' Party (PT), has told aides that handing out ministries and second-tier posts in his new government will be tougher. Before any appointment, each party in the centrão, the loose bloc of center-right parties in Brazil's Congress, must say how many votes it can guarantee in the National Congress. The plan is part of the government's transition for Lula's fourth term, according to the source report.
The bill for Lula's third term
The message grows out of a problem the presidential palace (the Planalto) itself acknowledges. In the third term, centrão parties held important ministries but kept voting against government bills in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. In other words, they kept the posts and did not always deliver the votes.
The order around Lula now is to avoid a repeat. The new line calls for a kind of advance tally: each party must present a precise estimate of the support it can ensure in votes. In practice, a place in the Esplanada, the Brasília avenue that houses the federal ministries, would depend on a formal promise of loyalty.
A Lula 'transformed' by the vote?
Inside the Planalto, the assessment is that Lula came out of the election campaign "transformed." The government's reading is that the election result gave it room to impose stricter rules in talks with allies.
According to the political design the government has drawn up, the strategy aims to narrow the gap between the posts offered and real support in Congress. It is an indirect admission that this gap existed until now and was large.
The tone also clashes with an earlier remark by the president. Lula had said that, from a governance standpoint, Congress "contributed a lot" in the third term.
Kassab first in line
Efforts to rebuild ties have already begun through government go-betweens. Among the first to be approached is Gilberto Kassab, national president of the PSD (Social Democratic Party). An in-person meeting with Lula is expected after the holiday to align the governability rules for the next administration.
There is an explosive ingredient in the talks. During the campaign, most of the parties in this bloc backed Flávio Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party (PL), in the runoff. Now, at the start of the transition, Lula wants to flip the logic and tie the parties' participation in government to effective support in votes.
The source does not say which parties would accept the conditions, how the commitment would be formalized or monitored, or what the consequence would be for a party that promises and does not deliver.
Why it matters
Brazil's presidents have no stable majority of their own in Congress and have long built coalitions by offering ministries and other posts to parties in the centrão. The bloc's votes are often decisive for the government's agenda in both chambers. Lula, who first took office in 2003, is now trying to change the terms of that exchange.
What comes next
The first test should be the meeting with Kassab, planned for after the holiday. The response of the PSD and the other parties in the bloc will show whether the centrão accepts being held to account in advance, or whether Lula's new method runs into the old politics of horse-trading that he says he wants to correct.
VDD Analysis
When a government has to demand in writing that allies vote with it, it is because the loyalty it bought before never arrived. The episode shows the cost of governing by handing out posts: ministries delivered, votes denied. For taxpayers, the question remains the same: how much does it cost to sustain a bloated state machine just to secure a majority in Congress, and why can't the government win support through projects and ideas rather than posts?
With information from Bacci Últimas.
