Transcripts For CSPAN Wilson Center Discussion On Brazils Government 20240714

This period is marked by mostly difficult, negative news, with one good news at the very end of this period of six months, the announcement of the agreement between the european union, 20 years in the making. Whether the agreement will be implemented remains, obviously, a question mark that we will detail in negotiations. Different elements of the agreement. It is a complicated manner, but it is important that the agreement has been confirmed. Also, quite important is the lift of the veto the United States had on negotiations between brazil and the oecd geared toward brazil. This is a very important information, very important development, was an accomplishment of president bolsonaros visit here in washington in april. Again, remains to be seen how the negotiations between brazil and the member countries will develop. We know that this was accomplished thanks to the white house over the objections of ustr and commerce department. So we start in a scenario where it is uncertain. Uncertainty is has been the mark of the First Six Months. But it is not clear whether the president will be able to implement this ambitious and controversial agenda. We are live on webcast, we are live on cspan for this discussion, and i wanted to welcome our colleagues from cspan in the audience following this proceeding. As you know, pension reform, which is key to restoring confidence in brazil, has moved forward in tbilisi on congress in the Brazilian Congress due to the efforts of the speaker of the house, and the successful u. S. Visit which i mentioned before. Foreign policy remains a question mark in brazil. We have controversial measures, some of them already reversed at the vote in congress and Supreme Court. Those geared towards education, gender, environment, indigenous rights, etc. As you know, the most popular minister of the government has been under a lot of pressure following improper exchanges, or what was presented as improper exchanges between prosecutors. And also in the news, tensions between the president s inner circle and his military advisers, which remains unresolved. Most important, the two principal information of this pe riod are unfortunately negative. Period are unfortunately negative. The economy is not doing well. Predictions of Economic Growth at the beginning of the period have been revised towards the negative side. And the president s popularity has also dropped. Depending on who is making the calculation, it has dropped precipitously in the last six months. Well, to discuss all that, we have with us a Wonderful Group of people, dear friends all. Mauricio mora, ceo and founder of ideaiia the data. Andrea murta, director of north america jota. It is a very successful, awardwinning publication in brazil. Monica de bolle, director of the Latin American Program at the school of advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins university. Also at the Peterson Institute of international economics. And last but not least, the thiago de aragao, partner and director of intelligence for the center for strategic and International Studies, csis. They will speak in the order you see here, and i will invite mauricio to go first. He has a powerpoint. Good morning. Thanks for offering the invitation. I have some numbers, but im going to start saying that the First Six Months of bolsonaro, we have a lot of results. I think you americans can relate to that because i started watching the daily tweeter from the presidency, and not just from the president himself also from his son. You should be glad to have donald, jr. , in the first family. We have a lot of tweets. We have a minister innovation from the government. I will bring some numbers in here. And you have the famous speech from bolsonaro about the golden shower. I cannot go into details about that. [laughter] but the first number that bolsonaro, he lost popularity during the First Six Months. His positive evaluation when we ask people to evaluate the federal government in the beginning, people seem to very good about the government. They started in a highly expectation mood. But he was losing popularity, especially in march and april. Now we know that he lost popularity on the voters that voted for him in the second round, people that basically choose him because of the protection he had for the work party, not because of his proposals, those voters now, knowing what he is presenting, basically saying we do not vote for that. They are mostly concentrated in the north and northeast of brazil. They are mostly middleincome voters. The region of result of the president has the best evaluation is the south of brazil. But he lost popularity and this was very fast. 15 Percentage Points in three months. The numbers are showing that we have clear polarization in brazil and people who think the government is very, very good and very bad. This is different compared to the early parts of the government for lula and dilma. He is polling lower than those president s of the moment. The expectation is worse when people are asked how brazil is going to be a year from now. He is losing in a monthly basis. The economy is suffering not going to talk about the economy now, but the expectation of the improvement of the economy has changed in a negative way. This is something that i want to make the point that no brazilian president remains popular without Economic Growth. There is no popular presence president with low Economic Growth in brazil, and i think everywhere. This is a key point, how is going to manage popularity without Economic Growth. However, and this is the good news i think i have never seen this level of support for pension reform in brazil from the Public Opinion. Im not asking if people are against or in favor of the public funds, because it is very hard for the regular citizens to actually say what kind of pension reform is going to be voted in the congress. People are expecting that the pension reform will be approved and be approved this year. I feel that the congress itself has already realized this. My scenario is that they are going to approve pension reform this year. It is hard as figure late which pension reform will go through it is hard to speculate which pension reform will go through, but there is a sense in congress that there is Popular Support. People are already pricing to have pension reform approved. This is new in brazil. I think it is good news, because again, im not going to go into the economics, but this is different from what we had before. Expectation of pension reform approved is very high. This is, i think, the best news ive seen on the first matter of government. Did not have that in dilma, did not have that in the lula. But when you ask people if engine reform will make my life better for the economy is going to be better in the next three years because of pension reform, the expectations are very low. On one side it is good because people dont expect pension reform to be the silver bullet. But on the other hand, they dont see how the pension reform will get back jobs, get back income. In brazil i dont know the exact number but right now we have 30 Million People unemployed and another 50 Million People in the Informal Sector as well. This is a critical part of the government bolsonaro moving forward, because usually in terms of popularity the government do have one year because they can blame the former government, but starting from january 2020 it will be very hard to blame other governments for him. I think the economy moving forward is a key component, and first, the bolsonaro style of communicating to the Public Opinion is very similar to the trump style. You never know what is going to happen the next tweet. Going to give the example that paulo was talking about. The tweets in december and january, the worst agreement that brazil [indiscernible] according to the president ial tweet. Since saturday, it is the best thing that happened. You never know very similar to trump. He talks a lot to his base. Basically communicates to people that like him, that support him. Theres not too much to moderate the communication. That is also trumps style. Trump as it was to the economy moving in the u. S. Trump has at least economy moving in the u. S. In brazil the economy is not moving. The question moving forward, if that is kind of aggressive way to communicate to your own base, we remain with this low Economic Growth . This is the question i have moving forward. This is a key point for his popularity. The last point i want to make relates to the book we just published and it is available online. Hard copies on the left. When you listen to him it is basically dividing the country. The people that support the operation and people against oldschool politicians, people who are different from everything brasilia has to offer, from the oldschool politicians, the establishment, everything that goes against the work party, transporting the narrative in the campaign to the government. Just to conclude here, if you have good economic management, people are employed, but that is not the case in brazil. Key challenge on the economic side, especially focused on Public Opinion. Thank you, mauricio. Andrea, it looks like politics in brazil is doing what politics does in most democracies. It is proposals from the executive and what i hear, including from monica i hope to go deeper on that, is that the proposal on social security, a key element of the legislative agenda now, is much better now, and the regional presented to congress, president. So is politics functioning in brazil . Is this a way to look into . Thats a great question and has been a defining one for the six months of the bolsonaro government. When he ran for elections he made two bets. He bet he could win an election without the usual proposals that you do did in the past without the party behind him, tv time, etc. That bet he has won obviously. The second is that he could change the way politics is done in brazil and the relationship between the executive and the powers in brazil could be revamped in a new way. So far at least that has not paid off. His relationship with other powers has been controversial, and if i would summarize what is happening in brazil in one sentence, the economic proposals are moving forward in spite of the government and not because of the government. I will show you some numbers to support that. Just so you understand what we do, we have an online digital news publication and we work with corporations and businesses on Premium Products that use our journalistic newsgathering with the data pulling and analyzing to show trends in government and in agencies throughout the three branches of power in brazil. To explain a little bit how these relationships are going on, let me start with the easiest one to which is that bolsonaro and the Supreme Court. We are coming from a time when we saw the Supreme Court have a very strong activity coming from the elections, the decisions that set of the stage to have the outcomes that we did. They were very powerful. It was on the discussion of the Kitchen Table of every brazilian for about a year. Now that bolsonaro is in power and we have the chief justice presiding of the Supreme Court, we have seen more of a supporting actor role for the Supreme Court. They are not trying to impose anything to the government. They are taking a more active role. It will not act if something is clearly constitutional that require the institutional response. But they are not in the mood or in the role of creating issues for the government. They want to facilitate governing not to be on the side of government by facilitating the relationships in brazil that would help the governing process move forward. Someone who deals with politics without too much for your of interfering, meetings with politicians and Party Leaders throughout the spectrum. That is the tone he wants to give the Supreme Court right now in brazil. Congress is a bit different. What we are seeing in congress is the opposite, taking a much stronger role in the maneuvering of brazilian politics right now. The relationship between congress and the bolsonaro government is quite difficult. This bet that he made of trying to set of a new tone for the relationship has created the deep divide between the leadership of congress and the executive. As i not helped by tweet that those are not helped by tweets from the government and the first graph shows the assessment of deputies in the house of representatives and their relationship to the bolsonaro government. Wasaverage at this point 3. 94, which was a very low average, and it was similar to what we saw with Dilma Rousseff before the impeachment. It is about 4. 8 on both sides. There was a bit of a Recovery Movement with that relationship. Bolsonaro going back and allowing certain oldstyle politics to take place. Allowing people to nominate the ir own people for positions in state governments, for example, or at least promising to do so. That has provoked improvement. It is still a difficult relationship. This is the assessment of the bolsonaro government govern ability, which is the ability to approve laws. It is still not high, 4. 4. Not much above 5 right now. You might ask them, how is it possible that Economic Reforms are going to happen . A lot of subscribers in the u. S. That asked me how pension reform is going to pass if you have this type of relationship. What happens is that bolsonaro has the luck, lets say, of having a shared agenda with the leaders of congress. The speaker of the house is not moving forward with pension reform to help bolsonaro. He is doing that because he believes it will help himself. His own political agenda, and there is shared understanding in congress that this has to happen. We see on a somewhat conservative number, 84 chance of reform being approved asat the moment. There is not an organized movement to be opposed. There are pockets of resistance, but not in an organized way that would ep this from going impede this from going for. Together with asking congressmen their opinions and getting the responses, we do our own assessment based on how they behave on social media, our own newsgathering and conversations and the record with congressmen at the parliament in brasilia and also the historic data of their voting. We put all of that together to measure chances of app roval or to see how each congressman is going to vote Going Forward. When congressmen vote together with the government following the advice of the leadership of government, we call that high governability . Executives will vote with the way the leadership of government is telling them to vote. It has never been quite easy in brazil. It goes up and down a lot. You have specific drops in dramatic moments of brazilian history, including before the impeachment, when the tapes were released, we see very sharp drops. The beginning of the bolsonaro government, you see at the very end of the line a very sharp drop when the relationship with congressmen was very bad and congress was sending messages to government and approving bills and all the things that the government felt would be damaging to the budget operation to send that message. What it went right up but it went right up again. Shared agenda. And they will not make you vote on something that they dont think is going to be approved anyways. It will take out of the agenda of the voting in congress measures that they dont think will be approved. That helps the index go up. Bolsonaro is not at the height of what lula had. What he had at the best moments of the presidency, he has not reached that point, but it is not so low as to prevent approval of measures can be there. This shows the frequency of votes together with what the government wants. We did see that drop right at the beginning that was strong with the messages being sent. It went up again. It is on the level that can still pass. We think there is an 85 govern ability index. We calculate there are about 250 executives that vote or often than not together with government, which is a high number, and enough to pass even constitutional amendments in brazil. The new representatives we had a very big turnaround of new people coming in to congress in the last election, newly elected ones more likely to vote with government than the other. Here we see how we divide parties in Congress Based on whether or not they are more on the governments side or less. The blue ones are more likely to vote together with government. In terms of number of parties, it is way higher than people who are neutral and people opposed to government, period. The opposition you can basically count as the workers parties, and those are the most antagonistic, but he doesnt go much beyond that. People who are against the bolsonaro government in every stance that they have. This is just the position of parties by those numbers. So the Workers Party is definitely against the government, but not many else. Just to finish with pension reform, this is the historic lines of support for plans of the government. We have seen a steady increase of support. We are seeing it go up again. Right now the blue line is higher than when we had no proposal on the table. It was very high before it was presented. Once the negotiations move forward, occurring to take out are going to take out of the proposal points of it . It went up again. I will end say that these measurements are focused mostly on economic points, the economic agenda. These measurements are focused on the economic agenda. If you were to measure the support for the agenda of the bulls our government, it is bolsonaro government, it is very different. They have little appreciation at this point for the most controversial behavioral points that bolsonaro is proposing, which are important for his base of support. They were parts of his campaign, including loosening regulations for gun ownership or things related to abortion. We have more of an adversarial position from the parliament and the Supreme Court as well. That should be more of a challenge to bolsonaro than improving economic reform. On the economic side we have reforms will move forward based on what we see right now in government. Whether or not that will be enough to spur the brazilian economy i believe that for monica to answer. Thank you very much, andrea. This month we are marking 25 years of the rail plan. It is the plan implemented under itdamar franco, the minister of finance. Sociologists to implement this. The idea of that plan was born at the Wilson Center when he was a scholar here in the early 1980s. It took 10 years of discussions that evolved into what was the plan. When the plan was announced, i remember the then president of the central bank and later minister of finance for eight years said that the challenge here is for brazil to become a normal country. Something that andrea just mentioned, and i wanted to ask monica to talk about that a little bit. It is just budgeting. In most democracies in the world it is mandatory. The legislative branch approved the budget. They have the power of the purse. The executive managers the budget. In brazil we have special things, and i wanted to welcome monica and ask her, as she presents the economic picture, to talk a little bit about. Thank you, paulo. Thank you to all my distinguished colleagues on the panel. You took a little of my point away when you mentioned the real. I was going to use that to open my remarks and say broadly, bigger picture, not six months, but bigger picture, brazil has advanced quite a lot since the mid1990s, and a large part of that, if not most of that, was due to this incredibly successful but at the same time difficult to understand and still difficult to understand for many people stabilization plan that brazil implemented in 1994 and then continued on in 1995. The real plan, which now has its 25th anniversary, is really a turning point when you look at the brazilian economy. The brazilian economy would not have been able to go anywhere without the real plan because of because of hyperinflation we kept suffering. The real plan is conceived by a group of people, many of which were my former professors in brazil, and it had a component of rate creativity and great audacity, which was not very well looked upon by International Organizations at the time. Namely, the imf. The imf did not support the real plan, because it supported previous stabilization plans in brazil that have failed, so they looked warily at the real plan as something that had a chance to succeed. Some of the things the real plan contained were things that were highly questionable at the time because they were perceived as being heterodox in terms of not being exactly mainstream. I bring that up, and i bring the creativity and the audacity to the table of the real plan, and that is why i wanted to start there, because that is exactly what we are missing on Economic Policy when you look at the First Six Months of the Bolsonaro Administration. Yes, we have seen a very important push on pension reform championed by congress, as was correctly put here, championed by the fact that we have now had about three years of very intensive discussions on pension reform. We are about to get it done, and i think that is a very good thing. Pension reform the pension reform that we are about to get done is going to be very important in opening up physical space for brazil in the mediumterm. It is a more ambitious reform even in the version that had been presented by the special commission in the lower house, which is a sort of i do like to use exactly this term, because i dont believe it is all that much diluted, but somewhat diluted from what the original plan envisaged in terms of savings over the next 10 years. Nonetheless, it is a very ambitious plan and much more ambitious than what the Temer Administration envisaged. If it is approved, and i ever reason to believe that is going to happen, it will be a very important thing for brazil to get its fiscal accounts in order. How does that translate into the broader economy as a whole . That is where we are missing the audacity and the creativity i was talking about in the beginning. Most of the first few months of the Bolsonaro Administration have been spent talking about pension reform and how pension reform is going to transform brazil. Pension reform is not going to transform brazil. Pension reform is going to do what pension reform has to do can resolve some of the mediumterm fiscal issues brazil has full stop but brazil has a lot more problems than just these mediumterm fiscal issues. When we look at the economy broadly and we see how growth has been very, very slow, as been mentioned here before, this is a symptom of something else. This is not a cyclical problem we had a couple years ago and we are in the midst of getting it resolved. This is something that had been, if you wish, a form of secular stagnation. Brazil is not growing, or it is growing slowly. The growth was largely held by a bumper crop in both of those years. We do not have to bumper crop in 2019, and what happened . Gdp contracted a little bit in the first quarter. When you look at other things that seem to 2. 2 or signal stagnation, we had a longerterm trends that have been very concerning for quite a while. If you look at productivity growth in brazil, it has been stagnant depending on the measure you look at. This is something that has been ongoing. It was masked for quite a number of years by the commodities cycle on the positive things that were happening in the brazilian economy, which more or less stopped in 2014. But it has been there. Now that we do not have these other very beneficial factors to help the economy, it is on full display. Low productivity growth is on full display at the moment, and it is one of the expeditions for white growth why growth is so slow. The other factor is demographics. Brazil is coming to the end of its demographic bonus, the time in which you see the enlargement of the labor force and the economically active population. When you couple that with what happened to educational quality not Educational Attainment per se, because that has to do with accession, and that we have seen an improvement in. But when you look at the indicators of educational quality, what you see is very dramatic. Just give you an example of what i mean by that, when you look at brazils scores on the oecd examined, it is astounding how badly brazilian students do. Brazilians are at the bottom of those rankings. When you look at math alone, the oecd has a few levels by which how provision the students how proficient the students are in various areas. There are six levels if you are on the whole six, you are doing really well. Level two is the bare minimum proficiency you need to have an given area. In math, when you break down the numbers by social demographic or socioeconomic status from what you see is on the lower end on the socioeconomic index that the oecd publishes as well as on the higher end in other words, poor students as well as richard students, 85 of them on average do not reach level two in math. We are basically having a number of students come out of the educational system in brazil who are not proficient in math. You have similar numbers in reading and similar numbers in science. This is right now the state of play in brazil, which of course, when you look at this picture longerterm, does not bode well for productivity trends looking into the future, at least when thinking about Labor Productivity in general. That is a concern. The second aspect that i think is important to mention is Interest Rates. Brazil has achieved right now a very for many reasons, Interest Rates in brazil are very low at the moment. You take Interest Rates and you discount inflation. We tried to do this under Dilma Rousseff in a way that was not reflective of the underlying conditions. In other words, brazil tried to force real Interest Rates to be low under the rousseff administration, and that turned out to be very bad because it disorganized the economy. Right now real Interest Rates are low because they have a lot of real Interest Rates to be low. An remaining low over the mediumterm there are no inflationary pressures from an employment being very high is means that wage pressures are not present. That basically means that inflation is pretty much contained and it will remain fairly stable. There have been a lot of calls for the central bank to reduce Interest Rates in order to bump up growth a bit. I have my down as to whether that will have any effect at all, because when you look at the current level of real Interest Rates, 2, 2. 5 , depending on the measure of inflation that you use, what is happening is that despite the low level of real Interest Rates for brazilian standards, you do not see a reaction in the economy. Investment is not reacting, consumption is not reacting. That is the symptom of a type of secular stagnation which seems to be affecting the brazilian economy at the moment. All of this taken together basically means that pension reform is a great thing, it is not going to bring growth back, because there are a number of things we need to do on the structural front to face these issues, these longerterm growth issues, and in addition to that i bring back the creativity and audacity now you need to have some kind of bridge in the short term, especially if you are facing these high levels of unemployment and the parts of the labor force that are the parts of the population that are finding employment at the moment are finding very precarious employment. That leads to a significant rise in social tensions over time, especially in a situation where social programs are not really the focus of the economic agenda. There are a number of things on the economic agenda which are positive privatization is positive, opening up the economy i will talk about it if you allow me a few minutes opening up the economy is an important thing. You are many things which are part of this agenda which are very important will stop which are very important. One thing that is sorely lacking is what to do about the social programs that currently exist. And how to even rebuilt the social safety net that has been affected by the 2015, 2016 recession. Higher unemployment over the social safety net is not a combination that is particularly good to have. That is the situation that requires come as i said, creativity and audacity. What can be done in the short term to help this economy . There are some things you can do on the social program front. There are other things you can innovate on an do to help the economy along. I will leave those thoughts to q a. Let me make a few comments on the other side of the Bolsonaro Administration, which andrea mentioned and i think are important and yes, i am dodging your question on the budget, for the moment. So on the side of the things that have been put on the table, we have seen a lot of moves on the environment, a lot of blacks backsliding on environmental issues. We have seen backsliding on indigenous rights. We have seen backsliding on gender rights, minority rights. We have seen inequality increased. All of these things are very concerned. The marker for a deal is quite a nice thing to have at this point ement because the agreement in principle has not been published. However, we do know that there is a chapter on Sustainable Development that touches on environmental issues, indigenous rights, labor standards, and some of these others issues pertaining to minority rights and so on and so forth. We dont know the text, but ap art from this being a trade deal that opens up markets and is important in particular for brazil, which is in an economy that has been so isolated from the rest of the world for such a long time, it is an important agreement to help brazil, help the country continue to make progress, or at least not revert itself reverse itself on some of the issues where it has made significant progress previous and administration. I use the plural because of starts way back in the cardozo administration. Advances we have made on the environment, advances we have made on gender issues, advanceds withwe have made on indigenous rights, we cannot have back sliding on those now especially when the economy is weak. This is a key element of the deal which will in a sense put the Bolsonaro Administration on a leash that it needs to have at this point in time to not allow that kind of backsliding. Thank you very much, monica. The easiest and most difficult question goes to you, thiago. Where do we go from here . [laughter] well, the previous six months i think everyone here explained very well. I think it is clear for everyone who follows brazil even remotely. There were some positive things. Pension reform, which was mentioned here. Without getting deep into the merits of who is the father and who is the mother of pension reform, it is going on. Second, merkels deal was very big news which is very positive for the country as well. Third, i would add that there are potential good projects moving forward, like the bureaucratization agenda through the Economic Freedom provisional measure. It is something that will eventually help businesses to thrive. If the potential agenda if things keep, it can be potentially good as well, such as pension and tax reform. However and the however, unfortunately, is the slightly easiest part to talk about im going to try to forecast the next six months as if it was the next six months in one minute youtube tutorial. One of the biggest problems produced by this administration so far, in my perception, is the continuous attempt to disqualify politics in general, politics as a whole. The more that the government disqualifies politics as a whole, you create you transfer the perception of whether politics is good or bad to individuals who are fully involved and through a highly emotional lens towards what is going on in brazil. So what i see is lets look at lula in the past. Lula, his production of popularity work several of his social programs. His social programs were such a strong christian of support that even today such a strong cushion of support that even today, after the unveiling of the largest Corruption Scandal in the western hemisphere, this is something that people hold themselves to to justify their defensive former president lula. Bolsonaros cushion of popularity is what is called the cultural agenda of his attempt to reframe certain cultural habits, plus the antipolitics approach. The discussion of popularity might guarantee 20 to 25 of solid voters backing him up. We can see a parallel in a very similar to what goes on in the u. S. There is a cushion of support of President Trump that enjoys his antipolitics narrative and his cultural reaffirmation agenda on Something Different than what they had experienced before. The problem is the day after , and the consistency of maintaining such an agenda. For example, the antipolitics narrative is a point of inflection for any government in the world. First, because it is her solid base of support. But second, it weakens your relationship with other governments powers of the union, particularly the congress. The more that you strengthen this Smaller Group of solid support that can at least guarantee you certain times of narratives for the long run, it weakens her ability to maintain a healthy dialogue with the congress in order to a accomplish what you expect to accomplish. Lets look at pension reform, for example. Pension reform was explained as something that is incorporated by the politicians as a whole and by society is something highly necessary for the country. Whether in the future we will debate if this is something that bolsonaro supported or had his participation and the approval was 10, 15, 30, 80 , it doesnt matter. Pension reform is there and it is going to be approved, and i agree with monica. It is not going to unveil this door of paradise, of atlantis, or we have a golden ground and trees. However, when pension reform is approved we will have an improved perception of the government in society. From there on the government has two options, two choices. Whether the government will reorganize and have a peaceful dialogue with congress, or one will continue with a conflicted dialogue with congress. Remember that the more Popular Support you get, and this is even in our personal lives, the more bold and cheeky you can get as well. The more support that will emerge from the pension reform approval could lead the government to opt for a more conflictive approach with a congress, reinforcing the agenda of the antipolitics that guarantees this nucleus of 20, 20 5 full to if the government, however, believes that seeking a peaceful narrative with a congress, the next step would be potential advances in other agendas, which is great. However, these potential advances in other agendas would lead again to crossroads. When was the necessity of political not what is the necessity of political nominations. It is something the government has done but not as much as previous administrations. The second alternative is the paralysis of the cultural agenda. It is not something that matches a useful dialogue with congress. Peaceful dialogue with congress with the cultural agenda. They are not compatible. This would potentially lead to the loss of the 20, 25 of core supporters. If the government opts for a conflictive dialogue with congress, they will counterbalance pension reform, approving excessively good proposals. What are excessively good proposals . Lets say for example , changing the rules for adjustment in the country for workers. Order approving the increase of or approving the increase in the salary of the paycheck for civil servants. Congress would initiate a series of approvals forcing the president to veto. And then based on the perception that although the government has a majority, as well shown here, we can affirm right now that if we combine centrist parties, opposition parties, and part of the alliance parties, i would say that from today, there is a slightly more majority in the congress that doesnt want reelection compared to those that want reelection of the president. What is in the mindset of the congress the easiest way to guarantee that he would further lose support . Sending things that are complicated to the budget but socially positive to force the president to veto. Where this would come from . This would come from a conflictive dialogue with the congress will what we have from now on . We will have a technical agenda from no one particularly with approval of pension reform, which will guide us in the next two years, three years. It is based on behavioral politics and not necessarily something structured, summing to approve certain things. If there is a conflict a dialogue with the congress lets imagine the worst Case Scenario with this conflictive dialogue with congress. I guess start debating political Reform Congress could start debating political reform. What if it advances so well to the point where they start to debate reelection and whether should continue or not. This administration has a major choice in front of them, whether they strengthen their solid base of support, 20, 25 , in testament to the rest of the support that the president still has in the name of a cultural agenda that the parliament does not want, and a constructive dialogue with the grim and abandoning the cultural agenda that congress does not want an seeking a reformist agenda that could lead to a victory as big as the pension reform, which is tax reform. These are the routes of the next six months. Monica, go first. Thank you. That is that was a very nice way of doing a probability tree of different scenarios that could play out. Let me say a few things about the conflictive aspect. For anybody who follows brazil closely, you will know that brazil has had it expired this year a minimum wage rule whereby the minimum wage was set as the inflation rate of the previous year, and the gdp of the previous two years. That had been in place until 2019, and minimum wages in 2019 were readjusted in that manner. That role has now expired. One of the things that has been under discussion and of course the opposition in this conflictive dialogue this is not the pt opposition, but the rest of the opposition that has distanced itself from the pt and is trying to find middle ground and tried to rebuild whatever sort of centerleft politics that might still remain in brazil, what they are tying to do now with respect to social policies is find some kind of alternative for the minimum wage rule. I have learned from a number of discussions about what should be the minimum wage will Going Forward, similar to what we had under 2019. The fact that we included growth in gdp of three years before in the minimum wage will never makes sense. It makes complete sense to protect the minimum wage and inflation erosion. Adjusting the minimum wage for whatever inflation happened in the previous year, that makes sense. Adjusting it for gdp growth does not. The weight of the previous role worked way the previous rule worked, it fluctuated and oscillated quite a bit, it in brazil, a lot of expenditures, which makes the rule very relevant for how you will execute the budget and your capacity to execute the budget. Knowing how the minimum wage rule is set is very important. It is very, very possible in fact, i would say the likeliest scenario that in a conflictive, or even if you dont have it exactly conflictive relationship between bolsonaro and congress, but somebody will come up with a minimum wage rule that does not make a lot of economic sense, truly rings a bell in terms of, oh, ok, this government is not doing anything on social issues, at least we have this minimum wage rule being proposed, which could have severe consequences for the budget and the fiscal issues Going Forward, undoing part of what the pension reform is meant to do. This is not do. It is not a low probability scenario, it is a high probability scenario i would say today. The point about fictive relationships, and how the lack of this government having his social agenda, all these things conflictive relationships, and how the lack of this government having his social agenda, all these things make for a scenario that may take over the gains of the pension reform that we should not ignore. Just a quick comment. What is the problem with having a strong, very protagonist Congress Moving forward as well . From an intellectual point of view, congress and the executives have different interests. Congress is going to be much more interested in supporting the states they come from, many of which are in a dire fiscal situation. Improving the situations of states, several proposals being discussed right now would create fiscal problems for the government that could undo the fiscal savings that pension reform could bring to brazil. So it is likely, a scenario that people in the economy are discussing how to put brakes on certain proposals to change for example the rules of how you consider the health of the fiscal situation of states in order to give them loans from the central bank. That could mean a very big hole in the budget of the executive Going Forward. The strengthening congress in such a way that undermines the trajectory of the executive in that way could put the fiscal balance of brazil integral in great jeopardy. I want to make a point between the relationship between the executive and the congress. The bad news, moving forward, any Political Leadership from should get the relationship better. On the other hand, like andrea was saying, politicians in congress are rewarded by voters, more budget to get from the federal government to their local districts. So the main agenda is to get federal resources, and the government has a budget. The good news is a lot of parties in the center. Those politicians, the good news is that they are always open for business. [laughter] in the United States, this i think is called pork. Questions, please. Identify yourself and wait for the mic to come to you. I think we have two. First, please identify yourself, or your group. Yes . Marcel, Interamerican Development bank, retired. I am surprised by the fact that monica doesnt mention the income concentration is one of the main sources of stagnation in brazil. You talked about social policy but you didnt say what kind of policy, social policy you mean. So i would like to know what is your opinion about the role of income concentration in the toric submission in brazil historic stagnation in brazil . Thank you for that question. I didnt think i would have to say anything about inequality, because i mentioned that from 20152016, weve seen inequality rising and poverty rising as well. That is just data, what the data tells us. Historically, income concentration, the research on that as you all know, on income concentration and growth is very mixed. So empirically we have evidence that supports that higher levels of inequality stunt growth. We also have some crosscountry evidence that does not seem to show much in that way. So empirically speaking, it is kind of hard to say. In the case of brazil because income inequality has always been such a big issue, and here, i will go back to rials, it forces me to go back to the rial plan. It was one of the major income equalizers we had in brazil in the 1990s. When we look at what happened after the plan was put into place, we had four digit inflation and soon after it was implemented, it went down to one digit inflation. When you looked at poverty numbers and what happened to poverty numbers after the plan was put in place, it is very striking how poverty was immediately reduced. And it is not a surprise, inflation is a tax on the poor, and extremely regressive tax. It affects the poor more that it then it does other segments of society. It is not surprising that when you have an inflation stabilization plan of that magnitude that you will see that kind of result. Then we had several years were essentially we had a lot of financial crisis. After the ieal plan, and not much else can be advanced. We started with social programs which were consolidated. But for a while, after the first effect of stemming from the real rial plan, we didnt see much in the way of progress towards a further reduction in income inequality. That came later in the 2000s, was the consolidation of one initiative into one program and another of initiatives put into place by the Lula Administration in his first and second term in office which then continued. A lot of that was bolstered, the reduction of inequality we see in that period was the result of that, the fact that the country was growing in that period largely because of the external forces pushing the country to grow. On top of that, the things that were being done to the minimum wage. This role that i mention that doesnt make a lot of economic sense, it did actually contribute quite a bit and there is empirical work showing that. Showing that there was a significant reduction in income inequality stemming from the minimumwage rule which was actually not sustainable fiscally. They didnt make a lot of economic sense but it did help the country on inequalities sense in a while. Then we had the recession. What we saw was that precisely because some of those policies minimumwage policy were not going to be sustainable over time, plus the effect of the recession, we have seen inequality going up again. We have seen levels of concentration going up. On principle that evidence has to say on a crosscountry basis, in the case of brazil, that probably hinders growth to a large extent. This is why i was referencing social policy and what else we might do on social policies aside from Cash Transfer programs. Perhaps having programs that are targeted at specific segments of the population that are more discriminated against or sort of feel more of the pains of this imbalance that exists within brazilian society, that removing some of these things might actually unlock some Growth Potential Going Forward. That needs to be looked at and the government is not doing that. That is just one of the Major Concerns from the congressional leadership. This is what others are looking to, they are afraid of the adverse consequences, social consequences of slow growth. Here on this side can you reach the microphone here to this gentleman . Yes. Thank you very much. My name is james. Monica, your announcement was billy brilliant and has me asking several questions. Given stuff you said about the attainment of the oecd for brazilians of many classes, that brazil is in danger of hitting the middle income trap as it seeks to get itself out of the Current Situation . Do you think, given the positive press about bolsonaro government has received that bolsonaro might be tempted to do freetrade deals, perhaps controlling other countries, perhaps in n. A. F. T. A. Agreement . And final question, in terms of the economics of china, do you see any further developments in that relationship . Famously doing the campaign, during the campaign, bolsonaro criticized china a lot and now being present for six months, he has rolled back a bit. Let me try to remember all the issues you have raised. If i forget one of them, let me know that i forget one of them. The first one was on the middle income trap. The middle income trap is one of these things that if you look at countries how many countries have been able to get out of the middle income trap . They are very few and far in between when you look at the world statistics. There are mainly the east Asian Countries and a few others. A lot of countries seem to be stuck in this socalled middle income trap. When we say these things, it lends a sense that it is inevitable that at some point countries will fall into a middle income trap. I dont think it is inevitable. Think it is a reflection of the policies chosen, what path you choose to follow. At the moment, the path brazil has chosen to follow, nothing to do with the Bolsonaro Administration only, though it is severely lacking in terms of educational policy, thinking about the fact that we are already had two educational ministers, highly ideological people in this administration but going back further, the fact that we are where we are on the rankings is not a result of the Bolsonaro Administration, it is a result of many, many, many years of neglect. You dont reach the state where a large chunk of your 15yearolds dont have the minimum level of proficiency in math, science and reading just because of six months of that that educational ministry. It is really a concerted effort over many years. From that perspective, is brazil at risk of staying in a kind of middle income trap . Sure it is. With this level of such bad quality of education and students not getting what they need, you really dont have the kind of skills in the workforce to deal even with 20th century issues, let alone 21st century issues. We talk about for example, automation, how is automation going to hit emerging economies when it arrives . It is very different when you think of it from a developed country perspective and a developing country perspective. When you think about it from a developed country perspective, these are things that have been ongoing for a while and we still have a lot of questions regarding the amount of displacement they generate. When you get to developing countries, when they receive innovations, they are not in the process of creating them the process is not gradual, it is a abrupt. It is abrupt. You have a low skilled and broadly unqualified workforce, and all of a sudden youre hit with a major technological shock. What is that going to imply for a country thinking about the longterm perspective on this . And it certainly doesnt look very good. I would say that at best we are caught in a middle income trap. Maybe if we dont do anything we might be at risk of backtracking on longterm growth trends. On whether it opens the door to new deals, i can only cross my fingers and say i hope so. There are countries interested in having deals, mainly canada. Canada has been involved in conversations for a while. Maybe this is the push those conversations need. Of course, as paolo was saying, deals of the magnitude are not implemented immediately, this is a long process. There is still negotiations to finalize. There is still negotiations to finalize. Then there is also the legal judicial reviews, the technical reviews, agreements have to get signed and ratified by the different parliaments. So we are talking about an agreement not being in place for another two to three years at best. Nonetheless, conversations with other countries can start in the meanwhile, and there a many countries with which those conversations could start. Canada is one of them, the u. K. Could be another, and this administration has the ambition of pursuing an agenda with the u. S. Maybe that will be a push towards that, too, we dont know, but it certainly paves the way for this administration to be less antiglobalist in the sense of that they had began making their statements about Foreign Policy and trade policy more generally in becoming more open. And then, finally to your third point, which was china. On china, it is still very hard to read this administration, because while what you said is rue bolsonaro started off where he was trying to emulate trump and essentially say hings that trump would say about china, and position himself in that regard. He got a lot of pushback from the Agribusiness Community in brazil which sells a lot to china. They were not interested in any political problems with china. Seems to backtrack. We just had the g20 meetings and bolsonaro was supposed to meet with xi jinping and apparently, the chinese leader as delayed by 20 minutes and bolsonaro decided that he was going to jump on the plane and go home. So it is very strange, to say the least. And it is very hard to read. What is the true stance of the Bolsonaro Administration with respect to china . Very hard to read. The Business Community it is very clear, that Business Community does not want any problems with china, much to the contrary. But the administration . Question mark. Do you have any comments on china . The relationship with china s something this administration is forced to try to have a positive stance, so it is not by option or conviction, it is by necessity. And it is not even by the necessity of the administration but the necessity of individuals who support the administration and who articulated in the campaign that what they want is to maintain is slightly healthy relationship with china. On the other hand, since brazil overall is going through a very an environment where you are either for or against your left or right, you have to choose sides. When we look at the internal problems of the administration, what we have right now, the economic unit of this administration was able to isolate itself is an individual part. The military unit has not by their option or even by their own gestures maintained a irect revelry with the ideological unit of the dministration. Basically, i should put it the other way around. When the ideological unit move towards pro or against a specific subject, most of the time, it is a reaction toward another part of government who hinks otherwise. China is an example. When the government was elected, the Vice President said something that until today many people in brasilia mentioned. He said, brazil should maintain an equidistance between the United States and china. N the nature of not what you prefer that on the measurement of importance of the two countries. So when he defends an equidistance between the two nations, part of the government interprets that is a rejection of their initial idea which is opting for one over the other. O this posture toward china is not a consensus within the administration. There are individuals, departments, and players which are very probusiness with china. There are others against. Others that believe you have to choose between the u. S. And china, and others that say, look, we dont have to choose, we can operate on the two lines. One of the things that perhaps is slightly gaining momentum, perhaps not yet after what happened in the g20, is that doing business with china is not necessarily liking what china does. So their relationship right now s still at a crossroads. Brazil is a country that can enjoy some success depending on how the trade war between the u. S. And china moves forward. This is something that could benefit brazil and also bring some unpredictability, because you cannot engage and change your entire strategies based on a conflict that could be sold tomorrow or the day after. But i dont think brazil right now, particularly based on what monica said of our economic prognosis, brazil is not in a moment right now to choose. Brazil is in a moment to harvest every single possibility it has in front of the country, particularly a country that depends on commodities. I believe that perhaps, as the year goes by, as 2020 begins, if the pension reform does not produce the economic success and wave of benefits some people in government expect, perhaps this could be the trigger toward a more pragmatic perception of how a relationship with another country should be. Paulo questions please. Ben. Thanks very much. I am ben young, political trategist at the Wilson Center as a scholar. I want to ask a question about the matter of Public Opinion. Is supposed i am directing this question to mauricia but i am interested in anyones response, really. How recent revelations by the intercept about the ministry of justice this has to come up today, right . Revelations about the investigations of lula and the noninvestigations of cardoso, how they may be impacting Public Opinion around bolsonaro, and democracy in brazil. Would anyone like to comment on that . Thank you for the uestion. First of all, most you dont understand what is happening in the intercept case. They dont understand why it is a website, where did it come from, if those conversations are really true, or fake news. There is a lot of isperception, is lack of information. I want to point to two hings. The minister is popular by far compared to bolsonaro. E entered the government he has about 70 approval rate, twice as much as bolsonaro. He lost five or six point in a marginal way in the last couple of weeks, but the puts himself ow in the narrative of the polarization in effect. Basically saying in his public appearances that if you are against , you believe in the intercept. If you are for him, you cannot believe the things being eleased. But politically, he depends on bolsonaro now. Before, he was more popular than bolsonaro. But only happened with fernanda ick. Ut the Public Opinion view, he is a popular figure, now playing to the polarization. I think it is a good thing for brazil as a whole, but politically, he is much more dependent on the figure of the president. Andrea this is based on impressions and not data points. It is hard to measure the effect of all the revelations. It complicates the ministers positions, it puts him in the position of the victim that ms. To be protected. For example, the protests we have seen in the past few weekends. In congress, you have a lot of congressmen who are not in favor of his actions and are not necessarily supportive, maybe not on a public or personal level. You saw for example that immediately, the senate started discussing again measures against corruption that have implications for circumventing Authority Figures in brazil. It might be something it ight make a little more path to the Supreme Court because it would make a questioning of moro more controversial in congress. That is what he said, it makes him more politically dependent on bolsonaro in his position as minister, but not necessarily a side in society. Monica i wanted to make a point about the demonstrations yesterday and on may 26 which go straight to this question. This is based on observation, again, not based on surveys or data points. Just based on what we see. On may 26 and yesterday we saw demonstrations across the country, which were a mix of demonstrations in support of moro, demonstrations against congress, and the most rations against the Supreme Court. The three issues have banded together and unified a group of people who are going out into the street to call for these three things defense of moro, against congress, and against the Supreme Court. They are kind of contradictory in terms. If you are going to defend moro and his track record as a judge, and if youre going to support him, and therefore implicitly the judiciary branch, you cant be at the same time saying that you want to close down the Supreme Court. But there you have it. You have exactly a sense of how confused Public Opinion in razil is right now, and how it harks back to the point mauricia was making. How people are having a hard time getting to what these revelations mean. Because everybody is looking at everything in brazil with ideological lenses only. Nobody steps back from any issue to say, ok, wait a minute, whats right and whats wrong about this . What is this revealing and what isnat it revealing . Is this broadly right, is it broadly wrong . Lets listen to what experts have to say. All of these attitudes, and i think this was unfamiliar in this room, all these attitudes have gone completely out the window. But in a society where the levels of education and i keep coming back to this point where levels of education are very low, including among the elites you get the sort of confusion which is not esolved. Therefore, the level of polarization and the political repercussions this might have Going Forward are quite disturbing. Paulo i will just add to that y observation. I have been in brazil quite a lot recently, and i have the impression that those rallies, pro or against, is what we do n sundays. [laughter] i wanted to ask that didnt experts with pulling data, how significant are those rotests . By let us go to the next question. Yes. Good morning. I think monicas last comment is a great segue to my question. It seems like were living in an era where tweets can seemingly cast doubt on what is factual. I went to see everyone on the panel speaking from either your experience in your Respective Industries or in general, what mechanisms we can put in place for the public to believe information. And how we can restructure Public Opinion on receiving that data. I am griselda, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins. Monica she is my student. Paulo ah, it shows. Mauricia when you know what you are talking about, it is actually not a good thing. I have asked if people believe in experts from tv or famous newspapers for radios. 36 of brazilians believe an expert opinion, 52 to leave and family, friends and things hey got on whatsapp. That is a very bad issue. When our leadership and political leaders also emphasized that, of course, it doesnt help. It happens in brazil, the u. S. , everywhere, that the media and xperts it is not good to be an expert in actually knowing what youre talking about. Andrea i agree with mauricio. What we see is a reinforcement of peoples positions and it is not changing anyones mind. Here is a lot of effort in place to try to combat fake news and monitor social media, and try to bring people into dialogue across the aisle. None of those efforts have been very successful at this point. I think this is a question for the entire world. I will mention that this is where much a concern in brazil, including in congress. We might see very soon it congressional inquiry into the role of social media in elections, in an investigation that might go back to the previous election that we saw. I dont have a lot of hope that it will change anything, but definitely, my impression is also that the main source of news in brazil right now is whatsapp and not what people see on the news. Paulo thiago, go first. Monica may i Say Something first . Without disagreeing so we go in order onica without disagreeing with my colleagues, as a professor, i have to say that i do believe we can break through and make people listen again. How do we do that . Have no idea. But quite frankly, as a professor, i cannot believe we will be stuck in the dark ages where people dont believe anything anymore. Y own humble undertakings in that area have had to do with using social media to break it down complex issues. I found that when you do that, break things down for people, in languages that people can actually understand, so not using a lot of technical terminology but really using simple language to say, this is how say you want to talk about the e. U. Marcos deal. Break it down. And them what the deal entails, what is good about it, how it could potentially impact countries, people do engage. Of course, there will always be the bots, people who say, this is not worth anything, people who will attack you. But if you disregard them and ngage with people in that way, you can find engagement. And people are looking. Because things are so muddled and confused people are looking for the kind of thing and they are open to the kind of interaction. Again, as a professor, i cannot believe that we will not be able to break through this. Andrea if you are not following monica on twitter, ou should. Thiago a very fast remark on that. We are in a era, a cultural age where we desire speed. We desire it when we buy something from amazon, and werent able to pay for it to arrive a day earlier, we do. The information is treated in the same desire, that we have to be satisfied immediately. On top of that, it is very easy for us to mix up facts with opinion. Several facts are discussed as opinion and several opinions are discussed as facts, and the volume of information we are able to collect because of the speed that the information is delivered makes us feel secure that if we got something wrong right now, we will get the right version 30 seconds from now, one minute from now, two inutes from now. On top of that, the source always became more important han the content. But as long as the source is an individual, not collective this is why newspapers are suffering a lot. Because once in newspaper is painted on the perception of the reader, that he published 3, 6, 9 months ago something that was either wrong or radically different than yourself belief, it is immediately disregarded as a source of information. That trust comes from individuals that are similar of fart to you and that similar of fought to you similar of thought to you. It is way more satisfying than having to read something that pposes your thought and forces you to dig deeper in a period where we are becoming too anxious to read more than a tweet. Mauricia when you get sick, either for specialized doctor or google. Specialized doctors are still winning. N 2021, as monica mentioned, we incorporated knowledge into the exam. They are teaching kids to fact check, to understand these and think about what they are going to share, so this will be tough of the education. On all levels, from kindergarten, to college, they will handle this fake news and this expert that we are acing now. My own view, i think the dark ages have an edge right now. My sense is that there is pretty much agreement along the panel that the core of whether the bolsonaro government is considered successful or not manages to sustain itself through four years, maybe even gain reelection, depends on the economy. The economy is just overwhelmingly the key issue, not corruption, not crime and violence, not the personal behavior of bolsonaro or his children, etc. , it is the economy, stupid. Thiago i agree. The economy not only has the waves that which further than the economy itself, it reaches ll those other topics. The metric right now of success is increasingly being measured through economy. Because in all other social aspects, the level of adaptability is very high. There are areas in brazil that are extremely violent for a long time, and with the bizarre inefficiency from the government to tackle those rimes. Still, you will find life happening. That understanding is that the etric of the economy, and as we see in the u. S. As well, it covers up all different types of problems that should be tackled individually. They are placed under the umbrella that the Economic Development will invariably improve all the other segments that have problems on their own. Paulo thank you very much. Ight here. Our preferred interpreter. But now, i would like to ask a question about a former professor as well. I started my professional career as an educator, and i have always, always believed the economy, yes, of course, but it all starts and ends with education. So i would like to ask the panel and perhaps monica mainly because you said you have no idea how to deal with this, but you believe that as an educator, you can reach these people were you thinking in terms of using mainly the internet in all its forms, and or the educational environment . Because in brazil, at least from the beginning of this new administration, there has been a lot of negative movement in terms of interfering with the universities, interfering with ublic schools. And this is very scary. Monica i fully agree. I think the battle has to be fought on both fronts. With the universities and with the things the administration as been doing, the ideological battles that have taken over the ministry of education, these things need to be called out when they happen by people ho have influence. We do have a few newly elected Congress Members in brazil who have become very influential and who are trying to battle in a sense. But others who have space in the media in brazil have to lay that role. It is a very important thing to do. Hat i meant more by my comment hen i made it, even though hat is a crucial element, that you just raised, what i meant was that people who can and are university professors, people who are experts in the good sense of that term people should really be using more and taking more using more of the platforms provided by social media. Using more about space. Because you do reach more people that we. It is just the reality. In a country like brazil where everybody has access to a smart phone, they may not have access to sanitation, but they all have access to a smartphone. You can reach a lot of people if you know how to talk to people and if you know how to translate complex ideas into imple terms. So we are seeing some of that happen. It is starting to happen slowly. Y hope is that it happens more and more. That more and more people come into that space and that they come into that space without the ideology. Because that can happen too. People come into that space and then they start mixing up facts and opinions. That is a true danger. I do hope that people who are truly, truly devoted to educating the public in a broad sense do that with frankness, honesty, and in a way that actually engages people. I think there is a lot of room for that to be done. Mauricio i think the minister of education should learn to criticize the economy. We have a lot of good professionals in education and we have an understanding of what needs to be done in ducation and brazil. When the president nominates a minister of education, he does not receive the same scrutiny as the minister of economy. Keep asking myself why. Thiago one last point on that, it is scary when we look at the ideological influence. But this is not new. The ideological poisoning of our universities and our schools began a long time ago. The same way that we have to criticize how right now, they are looking at universities and schools and talking about ideology, the previous administrations, particularly the Workers Party administrations were full on with ideology on schools as well. And in a certain way, this feeling of this conflictive feeling that emerged in brazil in the past 10 years led to this sort of retaliation of my ideology is better than your ideology. At the end of the day, the Successful Schools of sweden, norway, and finland, have no ideology. It is pragmatic. It is the ideology of the result, what is delivered. I think the reason that we are so bad in our educational results is because we waste more time thinking about the ideological frame of what should be thought. Hello. Am an intern with eurasia group. Washington. My question is for whoever is interested in sharing their perspective. I am interested in what the future looks like. Does it look like it might pose a threat to the bolsonaro government in 2022 . They expect the psdb to that the psdbf from the you ext should distance itself from the Bolsonaro Administration on social issues but maybe not so much on fiscal issues . And, what will determine whether or not they will be relevant in 2022 president ial politics . Could a guy like maybe glider be a serious contender . Thank you. Paulo let mauricia give us with a definitive answer. Mauricia right now they are fighting each other. The main politician in the party, i think that they will have to handle very difficult elections, including defending sao paulo, the most important when this ability that they handle. I think you have a long way to understand about 2022. But i think they have a lot of issues to resolve inside the party. We know that many people in the party would not leave the party, old leadership, so i dont know what will happen. Andrea our conversations, to make it general, pdsb is a party that is not too different from of the debate is the symbol of the amorphous already that joins everyone on the same acronym the leader is the owner of the machine on this debate in a big way. There are people who say that if he wants, he can change the name of the party, he calls the shots now. But the old guard is not with him, they are looking outside of the party right now to see full they might support. Interestingly enough, one name that has been coming up is luciano. It is soon to say what will happen president ially. But a good indication will definitely be the municipal elections. There is a general crisis of partisan brazil. The crisis became individualized. The party will do well depending on how well the candidate will be that they choose. If it is doria, probably they will perform better than anyone else. The psl was a party that nobody had ever heard of, and now, it is the largest. Traditionally, leftist parties worldwide tend to be more organized than the nonleftist parties. It is part of the ideological, which the individualized thought that is dependent by nonleftist parties reflects itself inside the party, creating further divisions, they tend to organize hierarchically in a different way. What we have seen, the dichotomy between the executive and the congress, the protests in the streets criticizing congress. The general view that parties are part of the problem and not the solution will lead us to this quest toward individualization. Luciano, tomorrow, he could choose three or four different parties, and it doesnt matter which one he chooses. It will not affect how he is perceived. Just as well as if doria changes party, or if bolsonaro changes party tomorrow, he will carry his supporters with him. So in the psdb, it is a problem of how the kitchen works, not basically what food is being served in the restaurant. Themselves decide who will emerge with the dish. If it is someone like doria, it might be something good. But if it is somebody else, the power of individualization will still be very strong within the political environment i. Paulo it is something that mauricia i think follows very well. There are political actors in brazil who belong to different logical parties but tend to be more on the centrist side. Meet all the time, they talk over time, and they are trying to figure out a way forward. Can you elaborate a little bit on this, please . Revealing secrets. [laughter] mauricia no, i cant, but they are talking. Paulo traditional politics is happening in brazil. The system is somewhat functioning. Yes, you have to react to tweets , to this, and to that, but there is a sense of normalcy. Mauricia i have never heard of luciano. Aulo you know who luciano is. He is like oprah in the United States, that sort of universe. We have time for one or two more questions. Yes . Go ahead. I am from argentina, and as you know, quite well, we have very similar programs in our country. Unfortunately, we are not accustomed to work together, which is a general problem in latin america. But one of the things that strikes me is that at no point you have mentioned anything regarding science and technology, which like the pisa puts our countries in latin america, but especially brazil and argentina, at the lowest grade. So it is going to take a lot of time to change education, etc. , but what about skipping and trying to make science and Technology Work . That is my question. Paulo well, over the years, we have dealt with the Science Foundation in sao paulo a series of exercises there is a little booklet online on innovation in brazil that is coming out now in english. The problem is that brazil, like argentina, has great scientists, even great science, but very little innovation. The problem seems to be how the system is put together. That universities and companies, the systems are closed, that is the problem. In contrast with the United States. So this requires continued reform, and here, i think it would depend on ideological positions. The left may be as much of a problem as the right, because , more often than not, breaking this silence requires taking away peoples privileges. And in this academic community, actually, so this is a very tough issue. And i we will soon publish online our book on innovation. It is already available in portuguese. I encourage you to go online and you can read it online. You can print it. With that, i would like to thank all of you for your presence here this morning. I thank thiago, monica, andrea, and mauricia. Thank you to our colleagues from cspan, that spent the last two almost two hours with us, and we will continue with programs like this. Have a great summer. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [indistinct conversations] here is a look at what is life monday on the cspan networks. Forum onugin, a sanctions against yo north korea, post by the for peace. At 11 00 a. M. , cspan2 is live at the russians united are israel forum. They counsel in reply him to work on a nomination to the ninth circuit what of the deals. On seized entry at 9 30 a. M. , a review of the year mexican president salvadors administration. How authoritarian governments abuse their access to the u. S. Tonight on the communicators, georgetown universitys cal newport questions being connected all the time in his open of digital minimalism. Toward have a drive loneliness. That, media can give you typing in emojis, but all the while, youre missing the drive it is supposed to push us to your same thing with boredom. Boredom was supposed to pass us toward Energy Conservation to do things that were meaningful, now we can subvert that drive with a glance at a loan. Communicators, on cspan2. Now, a senate judiciary