The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), called a meeting via video conference, this Thursday afternoon (26), with party leaders from the House, scheduled to start at 3 pm. Lira is in Brasília and will coordinate the work at the official residence of the President of the Chamber. 
Officially, according to the press office, the meeting will deal with the elections for the Board of Directors of the Chamber, which will take place in February of next year. The main candidate to succeed Lira, who has the support of the president himself at the end of his termis federal deputy Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), whose candidacy has already received formal support from 17 parties. The other positions of the Board of Directors must be discussed throughout the meeting.
The other topic that should be addressed in the videoconference is the decision of Minister Flávio Dino, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), who suspended the payment of around R$4.2 billion in commission amendments that would not have met transparency criteria for its execution. The decision was published on Monday (23), the day before the Christmas holiday.
In the order, Dino also ordered the opening of an investigation by the Federal Police (PF), following a request from the PSOL, which was based on suspicions of irregularities in the allocation of resources for amendments from the Legislative’s permanent committees. Recently, Dino’s decision, defining transparency and traceability criteria for the release of amendments, was unanimously endorsed by the STF.
The suspension of payment for parliamentary amendments originated from a decision by the STF, in December 2022, which understood that some transfers that would not be in accordance with the rules for distributing resources were unconstitutional. Given the situation, the National Congress approved a resolution changing these rules. PSOL then filed a lawsuit opposing the payment of these amendments.
In August of this year, Dino, in addition to suspending the payment of amendments, ordered the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) to audit the payments made by parliamentarians through amendments to the so-called secret budget. On December 10th, the federal government published a joint ordinance to operationalize the release of amendments, days before voting on a series of economic measures, including tax package and the tax reform regulation. The ordinance sought to implement the STF’s decision to establish transparency criteria and, therefore, allow the commitment and payment of resources indicated by parliamentarians, benches and committees to be carried out.
