The perverse game of launching sham candidates to divert public funds.

247 - Journalist Naiara Galarraga Gortázar denounces the fraudulent and criminal protocol of the PSL party in using the party's women's quota to divert funds from the electoral fund. She says: ""For two decades, a quota law has been in place to encourage the election of female deputies, but despite this, their presence in Congress has increased by less than 10 percentage points since then (...) Bolsonaro's far-right Social Liberal Party (PSL) allegedly organized a system of fraudulent female candidacies to divert most of the public funds from the party fund to its coffers."

According to Gortázar, in his article published in the newspaper El País, "hToday, women occupy only 15% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lowest ranking in Latin America. This is despite the law mandating that one-third of campaign funds be allocated to female candidates. The suspicions surrounding President Jair Bolsonaro's party and other political groups offer a clue as to why this rule doesn't translate into more female parliamentarians. Bolsonaro's far-right Social Liberal Party (PSL) allegedly organized a system of fraudulent female candidacies to divert most of the public funds from the party fund to its own coffers, according to an investigation by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. In at least two states, Minas Gerais and Pernambuco, the Public Prosecutor's Office is already investigating these cases.

She adds: "andAlthough suspicions are currently focused on a handful of PSL candidates in Minas Gerais and 60 aspirants from four small parties in São Paulo, there are indications that the use of sham candidacies by women to obtain resources from the party fund is a much more widespread phenomenon. Around 35% of the women who ran in the last legislative elections, last October, received fewer than 320 votes – yes, fewer than 320 in a country of 209 million inhabitants with mandatory voting – according to research conducted by academics from University College London and James Madison University in the USA, and published in Brazil by the BBC. Everything indicates that they didn't even campaign. Researchers Malu Gatto and Kristin Wyllie argue that these candidacies not only circumvent the existing quota law but also serve to allow male candidates to receive more electoral resources.