This week, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reaches its first hundred days. And, in the assessment of the chief minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, Paulo Pimenta, Lula and his team fulfilled the established objective of resuming programs and social policies that worked and were withdrawn from citizens. To illustrate his argument, Pimenta mentioned programs such as Mais Médicos and Minha Casa, Minha Vida.
“These are programs that people remember that, at a certain point in their lives, they helped people live better. In those 100 days, we practically returned all the main programs to the country. Did they come back the same? No, we had the opportunity to learn from experience and bring these programs even better than they already were”, said the minister in an interview with the program Brazil on agendawhich airs this Sunday (09), on TV Brazil.
Paulo Pimenta said that now is the time to wait for the actions reestablished by the government to materialize and reach the daily lives of citizens. “There is a time for things to happen. When you have a plant, in order to harvest it, you will have to plant it, take care of it and, then, the time will come when you will harvest it, enjoy it”, he said.
In addition to resumption, the minister pointed out that the government will launch new initiatives, such as a large public works program. “The previous government invested very little in infrastructure,” he said. “We have a very important action by the Ministry of Transport. In this year of 2023 alone, we are going to invest more in road infrastructure in Brazil than all that was invested by the previous government in four years. This year, we will have money for maintenance, conservation, but also to resume investments, new works, duplications”, he detailed.
The minister stated that programs are also on the radar to expand the number of vacancies in full-time education, in day care centers, and to expand the number of specialist doctors in the public health network. “We had a huge number of surgeries dammed up and one of the first actions of our government was to make the resource available so that these surgeries could be performed, but we want to have a program aimed at specialists to respond to society’s demand”, he said.
New tax rules
Regarding the economy, the minister said that the new fiscal rules, presented by the Ministry of Economy, demonstrate responsibility without giving up reserving part of the resource for investment, so that the country can grow and improve the quality of life of the population.
“Just as you have a target, which is inflation, you have a spending target and you also need to have growth targets, job creation, and combating hunger. The country has to think about its management and its challenges as a whole. The proposal that we are presenting for a fiscal framework manages to combine the two things, it clearly demonstrates responsibility”, evaluated Paulo Pimenta.
dissemination of fake news
The fake news that spreads on social networks was one of the topics of the interview. And it was classified by the minister as a great challenge for society, in the balance between freedom of expression and combating misinformation.
“We have to think about how to face it within the limits of the guarantee of freedom of expression, of clauses that are so important to us that are in the Federal Constitution. The Federal Government is perhaps one of the greatest victims of fake news. And we take care exclusively of issues that concern the government. Our obligation is to clarify the population about misinformation that is spread about government initiatives, ”he said.
Public Communication
About the restructuring of Brazil Communication Company (EBC), the minister detailed that the government wants to invest in strengthening public communication and re-establish mechanisms for public participation in the company’s management. “I’m sure that the EBC will, in the next period, grow in terms of relevance, audience, and affirm itself as a great public communication project in our country”, he said.
