Popular councils for monitoring and controlling public budgets and public policies.

The time has come to put aside the lamentations, to rise up and get to work. The public budget has been privatized, hijacked by the vandals of democracy, and it is up to the citizens to free it from the invisible hands of the "Centrão" (center-right bloc) parliamentarians. The creation of the "secret budget" was the most audacious action of the corrupt political forces in the National Congress. 

This happens brazenly, right before the eyes of the country, disregarding popular movements, which seem uninterested in popular participation in the social control of public resources, as if the public budget were a secondary issue. 

The representative political system, characterized by the delegation of power, is increasingly detached from the problems of society and from the ideal of building a republican, democratic, just, and free nation. 

The "secret budget" is the most blatant expression of the privatization of public money by the gang of crooks that perpetuates itself in the National Congress, like chameleons, from government to government, to enforce private interests. 

We must put an end to this injustice. Imploding this abomination created by the Chamber of Deputies is the most important task for citizens right now. And this is done through popular organization and participation in the drafting and control of public budgets and public policies. 

Brazil has become a global benchmark for transparency in public administration after the approval of the Transparency Law during President Dilma Rousseff's government, which mandates the availability of all public information through electronic means. At the announcement ceremony for the "Open Government Partnership" in New York, attended by several heads of state, then-President of the United States, Barack Obama, made a point of referring to the Brazilian initiative as the most advanced in the world. 

The second step to be taken at this time, towards the democratization of power and the State, would be to definitively institutionalize social control of the public budget and management by society. 

Participatory budgeting and the holding of periodic Public Policy Conferences, such as those voluntarily held in some PT (Workers' Party) governments and in Lula's governments in the past, are effectively innovative experiences and the most appropriate means of popular participation, capable of mobilizing society. President Lula announced during the campaign that he wants participatory budgeting and conferences back. 

Engagement could be organized through the creation of "popular councils for monitoring and controlling the budget and public policies" throughout the country, to broaden the debate and directly link society with the legislative and executive institutions responsible for public management, whether at the municipal, state, or federal levels. A dose of citizenship to strengthen political parties and consolidate democracy.

Rescuing the budget from the hands of the crooks of the "Centrão" (center-right bloc) is a task for popular institutions fighting for direct democracy, since representative democracy has given us the "secret budget" as a result.