Difficulty to have quorum in Brasilia

The Labor day, May 1st in the last Tuesday, gets in the way of the government goal to have sufficient quorum in the National Congress of Brazil so that important budget projects might be deliberated, among them the one that opens suplementary credit of more than 1 billion of reais to pay the default of Venezuela and Mozambique, in loans guaranteed by the Export Guarantee Fund (EGF), of the Ministry of Economy. The urgency of the government is elevated due to the possibility of the good payer reputation of Brazil being tarnished in the international scenario.

The effort must be elevated to achieve the necessary quorum, since few commitees of the Legislative House scheduled meetings this week and still count with the obstruction by the opposition parties that have been hindering the votation, specially in the Plenary of the House of Representatives after the prison of the ex-president Lula. It is intersting to observe that the plenary of the House of Representatives is not deliberating the principal matters that is been draft in the latest weeks, for various reasons like: by lack of agreement, consensus and sometimes by lack of quorum. Althought, the discusson in the comitees have been advancing, which shows that the Legislative process has not stopped completely.

These actions reflects the struggle that President Temer has been and will continue facing due to the polarization of the Legislative Branch. This lack of interest is already expected for the election year in which the representatives do not commit in big projects or commit just to have an electoral support.

The special commitees in the House of Representatives have been highlighted in this first semester, since it has been working hard specially with public hearings for the instruction of the report that is going to be produced at the end of the work. Among the special commitees, we emphasize the work of the Comitees of the New Law of Bidding; the General Law of Regulatory Agencys; the Law of Treatment and Protection of Personal Data; the Technological Innovation of Health; and others that deal with the Project of Constitutional Amendments (PCA) – for example one that suggest that the entity of municipal representation propose Direct Unconstitutionality Action (DUA) and Declaratory Action for Constitutionality (DAC) to the Brazilian Fedaral Supreme Court (STF).

Even the agenda of the Congress this week being short, it is on the trial docket in the Plenary of the House of Representatives seven interim measures, among them, the one that allows Pré-Sal Petróleo S/A (PPSA) to perform directly the trading of part of the oil due to the Union in the exploration of Basin of pre-salt based on the sharing regime, current since 2010 (MP 811/2017). Projects that are being discussed for a while, like the one about lobby regulamentation (PL 1202/2007); the Positive registration (PLP 441/2017); and the Intelectual property (PL 333/1999) might continue at stake after this week due to the lack of quorum or by the lack of voting agreement for the matters.

As for the Senate, the emphasis of the Plenary is the Project that makes mandatory the disclosure chart with the evolution of the value of the fare and the price charged by concessionaires and providers of public services (PLC166/2017); and international agreements. The permanent comitees must have meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, with emphasis to the Deliberative reunion on the Social Affairs Commitee (SAC), on Wednesday, day 2, that will be able to vote in terminative character the Project that indicates the punishments when there is reusing of health products non-passive of reprocessing.