📜 Rubberstampers no more

Last week, the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration suffered a historic double defeat. On April 29, the Senate rejected Jorge Messias — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's pick for a Supreme Court seat — by 42 votes to 34, Brazil’s first such snub in 132 years. The following day, Congress overrode the president's veto of legislation reducing sentences for those convicted of coup plotting after the 2022 election. The House voted 318 to 144; the Senate followed 49 to 24.

The diagnoses came fast. Coalitional presidentialism — the system that has underpinned Brazilian democracy since the end of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship — was declared dead. Some commentators went further, announcing the birth of “parliamentary authoritarianism,” with Congress as a vehicle for authoritarian consolidation and the executive reduced to a spectator.

These obituaries are premature. What Brazil is experiencing is the reconfiguration of a system under enormous stress, and a government that has consistently misread the room…

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