Crisis can be a key catalyst for reform, but all depends on the ability to effectively channel citizen demands and the responsiveness of key political actors. The Channel is clear – the “popular initiative” (Art.62 of the 1988 Constitution), which requires signatures by\u00a01% of the electorate (1.34\u00a0million citizens) spread across at least 5 states, with signatures in each state representing at least 0.3% of its electors.*<\/p>\n
The problem is responsiveness.\u00a0Today, Contas Abertas reports <\/a>that the “10 Measures Against Corruption”<\/a>\u00a0popular initiative led by the Public Prosecutor, signed by over 1.5 million citizens, and advanced by 1016 different organizations, has been languishing in the Lower House since its introduction<\/a> over a month ago. According to the law<\/a> that regulates popular initiatives (Art.14), Congress “will give pursuance” to the measure, which is treated as a bill rather than a simple proposal. No pursuance is in the offing, however; passage of such reforms by the band of brigands governing\u00a0the Chamber of Deputies\u00a0would\u00a0be tantamount to political suicide.<\/p>\n But responsiveness is not just a matter of current political dispositions; political will can be shaped\u00a0by media pressure, and that pressure – as I\u00a0\u00a0detailed<\/a>\u00a0 yesterday in relation to ongoing reform efforts of the Coalition for Political Reform – has not been forthcoming. The news media did cover<\/a> an electronic petition by the organization Avaaz, containing 1.3 million signatures and\u00a0presented yesterday to the Chamber’s Ethics’ Committee, but proposals to fix or build upon the current political system lack coverage.\u00a0Read about the 10 Measures here<\/a> or the English Executive Summary at the link above.<\/p>\n *The popular initiative is regulated by Articles 13-14 of law 9709.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chanelling Demands Crisis can be a key catalyst for reform, but all depends on the ability to effectively channel citizen demands and the responsiveness of key political actors. The Channel is clear – the “popular initiative” (Art.62 of the 1988 Constitution), which requires signatures by\u00a01% of the electorate (1.34\u00a0million citizens) spread across at least 5 Read more about Non-Responses to Citizen Demands – Congress and The Media<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,159,5],"tags":[157,158,160],"class_list":["post-1153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","category-political-reform","category-politics","tag-brazil-petition","tag-media-in-brazil","tag-popular-initiative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1611,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions\/1611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Media Responsiveness<\/h4>\n