STF unanimously confirms Dino’s decision that released parliamentary amendments

The Federal Supreme Court unanimously confirmed the decision of Minister Flávio Dino that unlocked the parliamentary amendments. All ten ministers agreed with Dino in the decision that approved the work plan presented by the executive and legislature to give more transparency and traceability to amendments.

The trial takes place through the Virtual Plenary of the Supreme Court (Modality of Judgment in which the Ministers filed their votes in the Supreme System, without a session for the individual reading of each minister’s position). Although the trial only ended on March 5, all 11 ministers have already positioned themselves in the case.

In judgments in the virtual plenary, ministers may only agree with the rapporteur or disclose their own vote. Minister Alexandre de Moraes, for example, was one of those who published the written vote. He stated that the work plan presented by the executive and legislature indicates a “institutional learning” of reconciling the political and administrative reality of the public budget with the fulfillment of the Constitution.

He also assessed that, in Dino’s rapporteur, the process on amendments “properly assumed dialogic and collaborative features, calling all the organs involved to present explanations about the reality of parliamentary amendments executions.”

For Moraes, conciliation efforts resulted in the “maturity” of criteria and procedures for the execution of amendments that, in general, “pay attention to the principle vectors affirmed by the Court”.

The minister also stressed that the approval of the Work Plan does not interfere with “measures related to concrete facts, in calculating this Court.” The Supreme has about 80 inquiries that investigate suspicions of irregularities in the destination of parliamentary amendments.

Minister André Mendonça, the last to accompany Flávio Dino’s vote, also made considerations. In his vote, the minister reiterated the observations made in the trial held in December last year by the STF. At the time, Mendonça stressed the “high relevance” of the principle of transparency and the “indispensable character” of the traceability of parliamentary amendments.

Dino’s decision was issued last Wednesday, 26, after the executive and legislature presented a joint work plan to give more transparency and traceability to transfers. The amendments are still blocked in some situations, such as health resources that are not in specific accounts, “pix amendments” without approved work plan and commission and bench amendments approved without identification of the authorship.

The work plan has a stalemate between the powers that has been dragging on since August last year, when the Supreme blocked the execution of all imposing amendments. In December, Dino even authorized the payment of part of the resources, but with demands that displeased the parliamentarians. Now the Congress has given in one of the most sensitive points: the identification of the authors of commission amendments and rapporteur.

“When observing the path taken, I find relevant advances regarding the promotion of transparency and traceability in the execution of parliamentary amendments,” Dino said in the decision. Among the main results already achieved, it listed the reformulation of the Transparency Portal, the opening of specific accounts for the background of health resources and audits by CGU and TCU.

As the Estadão showed, the Lula government and the congress presented a plan to unlock the amendments. The document has some flaws admitted by the authors themselves that have not yet been solved. Two points stand out: the executive and the legislature promise to say what will be spent the money of the pix amendments and reveal the name of parliamentarians benefited by the secret budget and commission amendments, who inherited part of the scheme – and only then would the money fall into the account of the states and municipalities benefited.

In the case of PIX amendment, six out of ten assessments made by the ministries in these transfers, the information presented by the municipalities will not be able to inform the basics: what money was or will be spent, according to a report by the Ministry of Management and innovation in public services sent with the Plan to the Supreme Court.