{"id":1237,"date":"2019-08-30T06:41:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T06:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.observingbrazil.com\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2019-09-09T01:18:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T01:18:51","slug":"transparencys-gestation-at-9-months-does-bolsonaro-deliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/transparencys-gestation-at-9-months-does-bolsonaro-deliver\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparency’s Gestation at 9 Months – Does Bolsonaro Deliver?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Transparency for them, privacy for us! As its honeymoon draws to a close, the Bolsonaro government has revealed an insecure commitment to transparency. There are good reasons for feeling insecure. My research (here<\/a> and here<\/a>, and forthcoming book) has shown that few democratic regimes are as undecided about transparency as uncohesive minority governments, of which Bolsonaro\u2019s is a prime example. Not only does Bolsonaro lack a reliable majority coalition in Congress, but his administration has been riveted by divisions among politicians, technocrats, military leaders, incompetents and ideologues. The actions of this cast of characters conceals little poetic irony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colonel Laranja<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days ago, we learned from a denied freedom of information (FOI) request by Globo reporters that a certain Colonel Laranja (Portuguese for \u2018intermediary\u2019<\/a> or \u2018bagman\u2019), acting as the head of presidential security, signed an order in February 2019 to classify all visits to the president\u2019s palace as confidential – for a period of 5 years. One of the most basic principles of open government and transparency is clarity on who meets with public officials and when. In most countries, this principle is codified in lobbying regulation, something that Brazil still lacks despite bills<\/a> languishing in Congress for more than a decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This last\nweek, however, was not the first time that the Bolsonaro administration\nhazarded \u2018right to privacy\u2019 claims over the public\u2019s republican right to know. Right\nat the beginning of the new president\u2019s term, Minister Sergio Moro asserted\nthat demands for details regarding a meeting with Taurus Firearms, a powerhouse\narms lobby in Brazil, constituted a breach of privacy. The mistaken belief that\n\u2018privacy\u2019 trumps transparency in the democratic hierarchy of political values \u2013\nparticularly in a case of the public\u2019s clear right to know \u2013 is profoundly\nmisguided. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Quiet Assault on Government Transparency?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it seems to be in keeping with a quiet assault on government transparency. It all began<\/a> two-months after Bolsonaro assumed office, when Vice President Hamilton Mourao signed an infamous secrecy decree (9690\/2019). The measure would have vastly increased the number of authorities permitted to declare information \u2018secret\u2019 \u2013 a clear strike at Brazil\u2019s recent freedom of information (FOI). Thankfully, the result of that audacious scheme was decree 9690\u2019s ignominious defeat in the Lower House \u2013 emblematically, the government\u2019s first major defeat in Congress \u2013 and its subsequent revocation. But Congress appears to be, similar to the Bolsonaro administration, a beast of two heads in relation to transparency. Since April 2019, Senate President Davi Alcolumbre (DEM) has refused<\/a> to disclose a million Reales worth of receipts on \u2018printing materials\u2019 spent at three small printers in Brasilia (the Senate has its own printer) and has given carte blanche for all Senator\u2019s to conceal their discretionary expenses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or A Push Forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet despite these menacing precedents, the transparency agenda has received a push forward from some quarters. Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, eager to slash budgetary bilge, pushed for the passage of decree 9.781\/2019, which finally imposes transparency obligations on the \u2018S-System\u2019, a corporativist, business-welfare relic that encompasses nine services associated with various conferederations (confederation of industry, transport, agriculture, etc). Although S-System leaders call the measure unconstitutional, the S-System received more than 62% of its R$34.9 billion budget (2016 numbers) from taxpayers. According to article 2 of the FOI law, any private or nonprofit entity receiving government money for \u201cpublic interest acts\u201d is subject to transparency obligations, and the S-system should have been included in the law\u2019s reach from the very beginning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unprincipled Approach to Transparency<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together, transparency precedents thus far suggest unprincipled commitments to transparency. Transparency is imposed when it abets policy goals, but is rejected when it imposes upon discretionary activity (i.e. privacy). One would hope more from an administration elected to clean up government\u2019s finances and advance probity and the rule of law. Both those who voted for and against Bolsonaro prefer to see transparency wax rather than wane. And yet while leaders sometimes need a measure of privacy to conduct honest deliberation unconstrained by outside pressures, to claim privacy and shroud in secrecy basic facts \u2013 such as the who, when and what of government meetings or expenses \u2013 is contrary to the spirit and letter of democratic, republican government. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transparency for them, privacy for us! As its honeymoon draws to a close, the Bolsonaro government has revealed an insecure commitment to transparency. There are good reasons for feeling insecure. My research (here and here, and forthcoming book) has shown that few democratic regimes are as undecided about transparency as uncohesive minority governments, of which Read more about Transparency’s Gestation at 9 Months – Does Bolsonaro Deliver?<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,1],"tags":[183,178,65,144,12],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transparency","category-uncategorized","tag-alcolumbre","tag-bolsonaro","tag-freedom-of-information","tag-moro","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","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=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregmichener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}