Duilia Daliana Ribeiro Santos da Nobrega, Sociologist, Master of Political Science and PhD Candidate in Political Science UFPE. Professor at the Department of Sociology at the State University of Paraiba.

Pedro Nascimentopolitical scientist, M.Sc. in Political Science/UFCG and PhD in Political Science at the Federal University of Pernambuco, where he conducts research in the field of transparency, accountability, democracy and public policy

James Madison (1751-1836), considered the “father” of the United States Constitution, was one of the “Founding Fathers”, was quite assertive when talking about human nature and the consistent failure of man in trying to control himself. According to him, “if people were angels, there would be no need for governments, and if we were ruled by angels, there would be no need for external and internal control.” With the proposal to draft a national constitution, Madison defended the existence of a “checks and balances” structure against the deliberate concentration of power in one government department. Such a balance of power, in spite of this, makes it possible to neutralize the ambition inherent in the human essence in state instances and to delimit the personal interests of statesmen in the face of the predominance of republican virtue.

From this point of view, the ability to control the ruled in a democracy is based on a branched institutional chain, called in the literature accountability horizontal. This expression is widely used in political science (although there is no exact translation into Portuguese) as a synonym for interdepartmental control, represented by administrative and judicial control and, above all, control of the responsibility of the Legislature, when the object of management action is executive. In addition, the term is associated with best practices in internal regulation and transparency in administrative acts.

Control, in a broad sense, is recognized within public administration as an administrative function that aims to ensure that the activities planned by the government and the results achieved are successful, and also has a legal and moral obligation to prevent and correct any failures. controls that cast a shadow on the integrity of the treasury. In turn, the legislature and auxiliary audit courts, as legally authorized agencies, should play a leading role in accounting, financial, budgetary, operational and property control (CF: article 70). It is a political control that is designed to test the rule of law, legitimacy, the economy, in addition to applying subsidies and forfeiting revenues.

Thus, the legislature is responsible for overseeing the honesty of the actions of the administration and for the conscientious implementation of the budget law. The control dynamics carried out by the parliament follows two models, primarily the control which operates in a preventive manner and, as a rule, operates on the basis of the preliminary opinion of the NTS and the results of the activities of the Financial Inspection and Control Commission (CFFC). This commission is responsible for maintaining the accounts of the President of the Republic, as well as voting on matters relating to the request for information, reports, balances and checks of accounts or expenditure authorizations of the bodies and institutions of the federal administration, directly or through the Court of the Union of Accounts (CF: article 51). According to McCubbins and Schwartz (1984), this type of monitoring is called “police patrol”.

The second dynamic, referred to as “fire alarm”, is associated with selective control, in which the cases under investigation usually have significant public and media coverage. A well-known example of this type of inspection activity is the CPI. According to the authors who first used these analogies, there are some net benefits that may lead the legislator to opt for the second dynamic of executive oversight, namely the time congressmen spend on “police patrol” oversight. much more, since a large number of actions are considered that identify or correct actions of the executive branch, which often do not directly violate the goals of the legislation and do not harm any support base. In addition, media coverage can contribute to electoral victory as it increases the personal visibility of each parliamentarian’s work.

But how to guarantee effective verification when those who were legally created for this prevail over their political interests?

In Brazil, subjecting the Chief Executive to an audit of public accounts is not an easy task, as those responsible for this audit are usually asked to change their role. responsible for electoral advantages offered by the President. There are several tools for taking into account political interests that are used in relations between the executive and legislative branches, but one of them, in particular, attracts the attention of specialists and the press today: speaker’s amendments or so-called. “RP9”. This mechanism is based on inexplicable: When he uses the transparency of public resources, in practice he undermines the republican character of any democracy.

What we are seeing now is not budget control by the Legislative Assembly, but manipulation to obtain political privileges. According to the reservations signed by TCU in its opinion, in the 2020 LOA, R$ 30.1 billion was allocated for expenses arising from the Rapporteur-General’s amendments, with an authorized distribution of R$ 20.14 billion and an allocated amount reaching R$ 19.74. billion. For FY 2021, TCU draws attention to the fact that R$18.5 billion was originally allocated as RP9 (Rapporteur Amendments), of which R$16.7 billion was allocated and R$6.3 billion paid out. According to data recently published in the Integrated Financial Management System of the Federal Government (Siafi), out of the R$16.5 billion amendments made by the speaker for 2022, R$7.7 billion has already been passed, of which R$6.7 billion has been made. 1.7 billion reais were paid and blocked, which currently amounts to 16,636 spending instructions in eight ministries and 34 actions. Of the total number of requests, 11,026 were written by 381 deputies for a total of R$ 5.7 billion, with the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia the most affected.

In this context, the Court of Accounts, in its technical opinion, also clarified that the information on parliamentary inquiries that were highlighted through RP9 in LOA did not comply with constitutional law and the STF’s own decision regarding the general rules for transparency of public finances, violating the principles of universality, transparency and compromising the management of the budget. management. Thus, the “secret budget” appears as another little-known chapter in the history of the young Brazilian democracy, a real disrespect for the society of this country.