The Chamber has gone two weeks without voting on anything.
Over the past two weeks, interim president Waldir Maranhão (PP-MA) released deputies to celebrate the June festivals in their states, especially in the Northeast, which paralyzed the House; to try to compensate, he scheduled sessions for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week; today, however, there was no quorum for the opening of the sessions; 257 deputies are needed, but by 17 pm, only 88 parliamentarians were present.
Agency Board - The extraordinary plenary session scheduled for this Monday (4) was cancelled at the request of the acting president of the Chamber, Waldir Maranhão, due to the lack of quorum in the House. 257 deputies are needed to open the day's voting, but, until 17 pm, only 88 parliamentarians were present. For the same reason, the ordinary session, scheduled for 16 pm, had already been cancelled.
The leaders' meeting was rescheduled for 15 pm this Tuesday (5) – the Plenary will resume its activities in the ordinary session, at 14 pm. The agenda is blocked by two provisional measures. One of them is MP 716/16, which allocates R$ 420 million from the federal budget for actions to combat microcephaly and the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the dengue, zika and chikungunya fever viruses.
Most of it (R$ 300 million) was allocated to the purchase of insect repellent for pregnant women enrolled in the Bolsa Família program. The distribution of the product, the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Development, was defined by the Executive branch in January and is one of the initiatives of the National Plan to Combat Aedes aegypti and microcephaly.
Doping control
Meanwhile, Provisional Measure 718/16 amends tax and doping control regulations with a focus on the holding of the Olympic Games (August 5-21) and Paralympic Games (September 7-18) in Rio de Janeiro. The proposal determines, for example, the creation of the Anti-Doping Sports Justice system and establishes the competencies of the Brazilian Anti-Doping Control Authority (ABCD), including: conducting tests and managing the results.
According to the draft conversion law, by Congressman Celso Jacob (PMDB-RJ), one of the amendments included classifies beneficiaries of the Bolsa-Atleta program – a government policy aimed at supporting high-performance athletes – as optional contributors to the General Social Security System.
The idea is to ensure that the athletes included in the program are not harmed or even excluded from it, especially in a year of preparation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.