In the past decade, democracies around the world have been bent to the will of would-be autocrats. From the United States to Turkey and India, strongmen have accumulated power in the executive branch of government, and weakened the institutions that could check them, legislatures in particular.
The contest on October 4th will pit two radically different presidential candidates against each other: the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is an 80-year-old left-winger. His rival, Flávio Bolsonaro , is the 44-year-old son of a populist former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest for attempting a coup after losing an election in 2022. All 513 seats in the lower house will also be renewed, as well as two-thirds of the Senate. Yet despite the polarised race Brazil’s largest bloc, the Centrão (big centre), which accounts for 46% of seats in the outgoing Congress, has declared its neutrality. Mr Bolsonaro, who ruled between 2019 and 2022, gave lawmakers ever-greater control of the federal budget in order to shield himself from impeachment attempts after his disastrous handling of the covid-19 pandemic. Today, Brazilian legislators control 25% of discretionary spending in the federal budget, up from 2% in 2015 (see chart). Over 90% of Brazil’s budget of 6.5tn reais ($1.2tn) is spent on mandatory expenses, such as public salaries, pensions and financing the debt. In 2026, only 3.7% of the budget, or $46bn, was available. Of this, Congress controls $12bn. The grants in the sample totaled around $40m and had been sent to 75 recipients between 2020 and 2024. Irregularities were found in 82% of transfers, including money that moved through bank accounts that had nothing to do with the stipulated project for the grant, contracts with wildly inflated budgets, or funds destined for projects that were never completed. The accounts court estimated the loss to the public purse at $10m. Congress has approved 7bn reais of Pix amendments in the current budget, meaning some $340m may have been lost. Since 2021, senators have filed 105 impeachment petitions against Supreme Court judges ( who have themselves become overmighty in recent years ).
Because they felt she was not doing enough to protect them from investigators, in 2016, amid a gigantic corruption probe which ensnared dozens of legislators, lawmakers impeached Dilma Rousseff, the left-wing president at the time, in part. They have indexed the amount that the government must allocate to amendments to revenue growth, so that their grants inexorably grow. Party bigwigs will allow local politicians to support whichever candidate they choose. In the past decade, as a succession of weak presidents ruled Brazil, Congress hijacked power from the executive. Ms Rousseff’s successor, Michel Temer, governed with little public support. Not so in Brazil. There the budget must now always include a sum for congressional amendments. Congressmen often do not stipulate what they will use the money for. And they have all but scrapped rules around transparency and traceability in the use of funds. The absolute amount of money that Congress controls is not huge. The share of mandatory spending is growing rapidly, squeezing out the amount the government can use for discretionary spending. In Brazil’s fragmented party system, where presidents rarely command a congressional majority, control of the budget had long been a powerful bargaining chip for the executive. Presidents could shore up support in Congress by threatening to withhold funds for lawmakers’ projects. Now that leverage is much weaker. In April the Senate rejected Lula’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Jorge Messias. He was the first presidential nominee to be turned down in more than a century. Senators wanted the seat to be filled by someone from within their own ranks. Outright corruption is perhaps the biggest risk. The sample was small, but if it is representative, the losses are huge. Indeed, lawmakers are gleefully throwing their weight around. The number of petitions may rise as new corruption investigations continue to ensnare legislators, including probes into fraud at the public-pension fund and the fallout from the biggest bank fraud in Brazil’s history. Brazil’s next president faces not only sluggish economic growth, high interest rates and a polarised electorate, but an overmighty Congress that will try to keep him weak and compliant.
In July the Federal Accounts Court released a sample of 100 so-called “Pix amendments”, where relatively small amounts of money are sent directly by a legislator to his local municipality.
