CLAYTON LEVY

 

Senator Helo�sa Helena, who participated in a debate on pension reform in the Adunicamp auditorium: �The battle is not lost yet�

Athreatened with expulsion by the Workers' Party for being against pension reform, senator Heloísa Helena (PT-AL) is ready to face the government and a large part of her supporters in the Federal Senate, where the matter should be voted on by the end of September. For her, although the government proposal was easily approved in the Chamber of Deputies, “the battle is not lost yet” and some points could be changed, depending on the correlation of forces in the House. Whatever these correlations may be, Heloísa Helena already says that she will fight to change important aspects for public service, such as the transition rule and pension parity.

“Although some government leaders have announced to public opinion that nothing will change, there are many senators who are willing to make the necessary changes”, guaranteed the senator, who last Friday attracted an audience that filled the Association’s auditorium. of Unicamp Teachers (Adunicamp) to debate the reform. “What we will try to do is secure the necessary votes to change this boring ditty that is the reform proposal presented by the government,” she said.

The senator said she intends to present amendments to points that affect workers in the private sector and the public sector. One point that concerns the parliamentarian is the transition rule for public servants. “We need to prevent those who already have their rights guaranteed from being forced to work another seven years to avoid suffering a loss of up to 35% in their wages.” Another point criticized by the senator is the taxation of inactive people.

Inclusion – Heloísa Helena also defends changes in the points that affect private sector workers. “We will present concrete proposals for the inclusion of the 44 million excluded people in the country,” she said. According to her, a large number of people enter the job market earlier in inhumane conditions and do not have access to social security rights. “When they do, due to the pension reform, they will be forced to work another ten years to avoid having a cut of up to 45% in their retirement”, she criticized.

Because she was excluded from the Justice Committee, Heloísa Helena will need to obtain the signature of 22 senators to present each amendment. For this reason, the senator adopted a cautious strategy. “I will only present my amendments with their respective signatures at the last hour allowed by the rules,” she said. According to her, this aims to prevent the government from putting pressure on parliamentarians. “We have experience of cases where, even after having signed certain propositions, they withdraw their signatures and the proposition falls.”
The government's victory in the Chamber of Deputies did not dampen the senator's spirit, who from the beginning took a stand against the reform. “As the Senate is a more conservative house, social movements think that, if the matter was approved by the Chamber, the cause is already lost. I don’t think it should be like that,” she argues. “The match is over; we can win or lose,” she says. In her opinion, senators have a constitutional duty to promote debate on the topic. “If the Senate is prepared to behave like a mediocre architectural annex to the Palácio do Planalto, then it is better to close its doors.”

Although she admits that in the current correlation of forces the government has a certain advantage, Heloísa Helena still hopes to convince a sufficient number of parliamentarians to promote changes to the text. But, once again, she prefers to act with caution. “We cannot signal the senators who we think will be able to vote for the changes, because otherwise the government will come out ahead with much greater pressure power and end up taking away the possible vote that we will have”, she argues. She guarantees, however, that there are already parliamentarians in the Senate who have already demonstrated the possibility of voting on some changes.

“In the government base, many vote for the halter, but there are some in whom we have noticed a change, even among the so-called allied base”, he said. According to her, these parliamentarians would be sensitive to changes such as, for example, the removal of taxation for inactive people. At the same time, Heloísa Helena fears that many parliamentarians may vote in favor of the changes simply as a bargaining tool to get what they actually want. "That's how it works".

Faithful to the style that established her among the popular and workers' movements, Heloísa Helena defends a broad popular mobilization to change the points she considers negative in the reform. “In the Senate this is easier than in the Chamber, because each state only has three senators”, she believes. “It’s easier to make the lives of three people hell than an entire group of federal deputies”, she adds.

The senator defends specific pressure from the electorate on the three senators from their respective states. “We should call them so that they can hold the debate in the constituency’s territory, because the debate on the blue carpet of the Senate is very easy,” she says. “We have to carry out an organized, firm and daily mobilization”. For Heloísa Helena, there are many parliamentarians who “pressured by their consciences or by their voters, will be able to work on the necessary changes”.

When criticizing the government's proposal, Heloísa Helena says that a large volume of resources will be transferred to the financial market. “The sale of private retirement insurance has already increased by more than 70% due to the legal instability created around the issue,” she said. “Insurance companies are already gaining from the legal instability that the government is promoting with the pension reform.”

Emotion – When talking about her likely expulsion from the PT, the senator did not hide her emotion. After calling the party a “holy office”, in an allusion to the Inquisition courts in the Middle Ages, she thanked the public for her supporters who took on her defense. “Unfortunately, our party, which was born condemning bureaucratic centralism and, throughout our history, has always vehemently condemned parties that became transmission belts for their respective governments, is now doing the same,” she said . “The government is in dispute and the PT is in dispute”.

The senator guarantees, however, that if she is expelled, she will not leave political activism. “I'm going to fight hard to make sure this doesn't happen, but if it does happen, I won't miss it,” she guarantees.