Jun 21 2024 | Nº. 122

Editorial

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sent mixed signals this week in dealing with lingering questions as to whether he would back potential spending cuts and budgetary reformulations advanced by Finance Minister Fernando Haddad Minister of Planning and Budget and Management Simone Tebet. “We have already done what no one expected would be done,” he insisted last Saturday, pointing out that his administration has passed a new fiscal framework and a long-sought reform to the country’s arcane tax system. He proclaimed, however, that his government won’t cut government spending on the backs of the poor. Still, he has shown himself open to some cuts. “The president has been clear to me,” Senator Jaques Wagner, a leading member of the Workers’ Party told reporters on Thursday, “cutting spending is fine, I’m just not going to cut spending on social [issues]. Then it’s up to the creativity of his team to see where they can cut costs.” Threading that needle—demonstrating fiscal responsibility but also a commitment to robust government spending on key priorities—is the single biggest challenge Haddad faces this year. 

The president also reignited criticism this week over the actions of Central Bank head Roberto Campos Neto, who was appointed to the position by former President Jair Bolsonaro and whose term expires later this year. Lula’s dissatisfaction with the bank’s monetary policies is part of a broader conflict regarding the Central Bank's autonomy, established by a 2021 law signed by Bolsonaro. Lula argues that the bank’s policies should be more aligned with the government’s economic objectives. This week, in a wide-ranging interview with CBN, he argued that the Central Bank chief he appointed in the past had more independence than Campos Neto, who drew extensive criticism last week after meeting with São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas, one of the leading candidates to run for president with Bolsonaro’s backing in 2026. Despite his often less-than-subtle political proclivities, Campos Neto maintains that the bank’s decision to keep Brazil with some of the highest interest rates in the world is based on technical assessments rather than political pressure.

Also this week, in response to thousands of people taking to the streets to protest a proposed law that would harshen sentences for women seeking abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy, House Speaker Arthur Lira, who helped fast-track the bill in a gesture toward Evangelicals in an election year, has indicated he will delay the voting process. Brazil is already an outlier in the region with some of the most stringent abortion laws in the world. This new measure has widely been seen as an inadmissible step backward.

Highlights

• Lula's popularity. Lula interrupted a negative curve in the evaluation of his government, which had been going on since the end of last year, stabilized his approval rating, and achieved good results in the opinion poll carried out in the first half of June. Today, 35 percent consider the government to be excellent or good; 31 percent consider it fair; and 31 percent consider it bad or terrible. The biggest change was in the failure rate, which went from 33 percent to 31 percent. Lula's approval rating is better than that obtained by Bolsonaro in the same period of his presidential term. It is also a higher rate than that of former presidents Michel Temer, Dilma Rousseff, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. However, it's not better than what Lula himself achieved in his two previous terms.

   

• Disaster in the South. The Lula government authorized the National Public Security Force to be used to reinforce overt policing in Rio Grande do Sul, which is trying to recover from the devastation caused by the floods that left more than 170 dead and 600,000 homeless in 469 towns and cities. The National Force is a consortium of state police, a type of national guard used to reinforce security actions. The use of force is a solution found by Lula to avoid decreeing the use of the armed forces in GLO (Guarantee of Law and Order) operations, as politicians in the region linked to the extreme right want.

   

• Press freedom. Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes banned the press from publishing news about the accusation of aggression made in court by Jullyene Lins, ex-wife of Arthur Lira, president of the Chamber of Deputies (House of Representatives). The next day, however, Moraes backtracked. The case is important for two reasons: first because Lira accelerated the vote in the Chamber on a bill about abortion, which is being harshly criticized by the feminist movement. Secondly, Moraes is accused by the extreme right of violating freedom of expression in his decisions. The back and forth in this case once again highlighted the minister's opinions regarding these issues.

   

• Political amnesty. Pressured by feminist social movements, Lira decided this week to remove from the Chamber's voting agenda a proposed constitutional amendment that would have granted amnesty to political parties that disrespected electoral legislation and did not invest in electoral campaigns for women and Black people, as determined by law. The matter is not yet over, however. Behind the scenes, there is talk of a possible new attack by parties unhappy with the rule in the Senate.

• Coup-makers on the run. The Argentine government confirmed that 60 of the 143 convicted of the failed coup attempt on January 8, 2023 fled arrest and entered Brazil’s neighboring country, while another ten who had entered have already left for unknown destinations. These people were complying with restrictive measures, such as the use of electronic ankle bracelets; they didn't escape from jail. Javier Milei's government spokesperson said there is every interest in cooperating with the extradition requests. However, Chancellor Diana Mondino said on her social networks that “Argentina will always be a sanctuary for those who are persecuted for exercising their freedom of expression.”

NEWS FROM WBO, ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:

New affiliations. The WBO announced this week the affiliation of the Brazilian Center for Climate Justice, created to expand the public debate on climate justice and racial equity in Brazil, and the Instituto Nós em Movimento, an organization that works to give greater power and reach to social activism and mobilizations to guarantee fundamental rights to residents of Baixada Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro. They are respectively the WBO’s 69th and 70th members.

Refugee Day. The United Nations High Commissioner highlighted on June 20, World Refugee Day, the role of climate change in forced population movements. “Addressing climate change as a root cause of displacement is crucial to breaking this cycle and finding lasting solutions,” the organization said in a statement.

Overseas. On June 20 and 21, the Novos Paradigmas Institute and the José Saramago Foundation held in Lisbon the event “Herança Universal de Abril” to debate “the importance and universality of the Carnation Revolution,” that took place on April 25, 1974 and put an end to the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and Portuguese colonization in Africa, while also inspiring democratic movements in other parts of the world, especially in Brazil. Among the participants in the debates was WBO Executive Director Paulo Abrão.

Birthday. To celebrate its 15 years, the Vladimir Herzog Institute is holding the exhibition “About Us – 60 years of democratic resistance in Brazil,” which presents a historical overview of people in a situation of struggle and social movements that acted and are acting in defense of our freedoms and our democracy from 1964 to the present day. The exhibition will be open to visitors from July 1st at the Cinemateca Brasileira, located at Largo Sen. Raul Cardoso, 207 - Vila Clementino, São Paulo.

Feature Article

Abortion Legislation in Brazil and the Impact of the Bill on the Lives of Black Girls and Women

By Maria Sylvia de Oliveira and Kátia Mello

Bill 1904/24 is another in a long list of violence perpetrated and tolerated by the Brazilian State against women and girls. It took just 24 seconds for the Chamber of Deputies to approve, as a matter of urgency, the processing of the project that aims to equate abortion performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy to the crime of simple homicide, even when the pregnancy is the result of rape, which in Brazil occurs every 8 minutes.

According to this project, rape victims, that is, raped women, will be subjected to greater penalties than their rapist tormentors, since current legislation establishes a maximum prison sentence of 10 years for rapists, with the possibility of conviction of 12 years for cases of rape of minors between 14 and 18 (art. 213, § 1 of Decree-Law – 2,848/1940). The announcement caused outrage in a large segment of Brazilian society, and it could not be different for the organization founded and led by Black women 36 years ago.

In May 2024, Geledés - Instituto da Mulher Negra presented a report to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which analyzed the situation of women's rights in Brazil, including the right to abortion.

The document presented data that during the Covid-19 pandemic there was a 45 percent reduction in services that performed the procedure, pushing girls and women into clandestine services. According to the National Abortion Survey (PNA), 52 percent of women who had an abortion for the first time were 19 years old or younger. Of this total, 46 percent were teenagers between 16 and 19 years old, and 6 percent were between 12 and 14 years old.

Data on hospitalizations and deaths due to unsafe abortions show that Afro-descendant and Indigenous women are the most affected. In the last decade, 6 in 10 deaths from abortion were women of African descent. When compared to white women, women of African descent are twice as likely to die. In other words, abortion is, was, and will always be a public health issue.

According to the Yearbook of the Brazilian Public Security Forum, in 2023, there were 74,930 reported cases of rape--taking into consideration that this is an underreported-- crime, which included the total number female victims according to Art. 213 of the Penal Code, along with those raped in a vulnerable age, according to Art. 217-A of the Penal Code. The data reports that 56.8 percent of the victims were Black girls and women who already experience the greatest difficulties in obtaining assistance from the State.

The data also indicates that 61.4 percent of people raped were between 0 and 13 years of age. We are talking about revictimizing children, who will be forced to carry a pregnancy resulting from a crime, whose perpetrators in 86.1 percent of cases are people they know, and in 64.4 percent are their own family members.

The situation regarding violence against women and girls in Brazil is extremely serious and what is seen in the Chamber of Deputies [House of Representatives] is not just a setback in Brazilian legislation, considering that abortion, due to rape, has been excluded from legal prosecution as provided for in our penal code since 1940. What we see in the Chamber of Deputies is the cruelty of backwardness and fundamentalism that have strength in the congress.

The fact that the proposed law sets the gestation period in this case up to 22 weeks for the possibility of carrying out an abortion does not reduce the seriousness of the proposal. Most Brazilian states have either deactivated services that offer access to legal abortion or have created severe obstacles to it, including denouncing and criminally prosecuting rape victims.

The stories of girls who, victims of rape, became pregnant, sought support in the judiciary, and were denied their rights are still vivid in our memory. It is worth remembering, for example, the shocking case of a ten-year-old girl in Santa Catarina, taken to the judiciary to claim a right guaranteed by Brazilian legislation, in which the judge responsible for the case asked her if she could not “endure just one more little bit,” when faced with a pregnancy that could take her own life. The girl was visibly revictimized by the judicial system, the Brazilian State institutions that were supposed to protect her.

The lives of thousands of women and girls cannot be the subject of political disputes among members of congress, as the author of the proposed legislation himself says that he seeks to “test” the executive branch on the veto of PL 1904/24, warning about a campaign promise made by President Lula in the letter to evangelicals.

No democratic country adopts the criminalization of rape victims as a public policy. Congress, the so-called House of the People, should be responsible for ensuring quality education for the entire population, enforcing constitutional provisions, including sexual education and respect. Sadly, with a special impact on Black girls and women, the current congress is completely unconnected from the reality of the daily life for most of the Brazilian population.

Maria Sylvia de Oliveira is a lawyer and the director and coordinator of the Gender, Race and Equity area at Geledés – Instituto da Mulher Negra. Kátia Mello is a journalist with a master’s degree in African studies from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. This text was originally published on the Portal Geledés website on June 15, 2024, and was kindly provided for reproduction for the WBO bulletin.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.