Politics

Congress overturns Bolsonaro’s veto, backs $1 billion electoral fund for 2022

Brasilia, Dec 17 (EFE).- Brazil’s Congress Friday overturned a veto by President Jair Bolsonaro that prevented an expansion of the public fund to finance the 2022 election campaigns to 5.7 billion reais (about $1 billion).

The lower house approved the measure by a large majority shortly after the senate had green-lighted it.

The exact value of the fund will now be determined by the budget commission even as the original text set it at 5.7 billion reais (about $1 billion) before Bolsonaro vetoed it.

If confirmed, it would be the largest amount collected in election funding budgets since its creation in 2017 in response to a ban on corporate donations for political campaigns.

In 2018 and 2020, the last two election years in Brazil, the fund, which is distributed among the parties according to their representation in parliament, was around $2 billion reais.

But for next year, when presidential, regional, and legislative elections will be held, the parliament has sought to increase the fund value by almost three times.

Bolsonaro vetoed the move, with the media calling it a symbolic decision.

However, Congress has now opted to overturn that veto, thereby increasing public spending to finance the election campaigns in 2022.

Bolsonaro is up for re-election even as the polls are not favorable to him at the moment.

The clear favorite for the October 2022 presidential elections is former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party.

Polls predict that he will get more than 40 percent of the votes, followed by Bolsonaro, who would get around 25 percent. EFE

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