Good morning! The pension reform has passed its first test in Congress—but there remains a long way to go. Yesterday’s vote places Speaker Rodrigo Maia as one of the country’s main power brokers. What happened at the auction of Avianca Brazil’s assets.
House passes pension reform in first of two votes
After more than nine hours of deliberations—and with the government setting aside BRL 2.5bn to finance projects sponsored by members of Congress—the pension reform was approved by the House floor with a substantial majority: 379 to 131 (with 3 abstentions). The vote, however, is only the first of two rounds. And then the Senate must analyze the reform, too.
Each step of the way should be fought tooth-and-nail between backers of the proposal, its opponents, and those who are not against the reform per se, but want specific groups to retain privileged rules (e.g. law enforcement agents).
In this issue, we will not analyze the rules approved by lawmakers, as the House is still to vote on 15 proposed amendments to the bill today. And some of them could disfigure the reform: such as different rules for...