Government places seal on pension reform studies

While the government seeks to gather widespread support from Congress and civil society around its proposal to overhaul Brazil’s pension system, the press has revealed that the studies used to justify the reform proposal have been made confidential by the Ministry of the Economy. In practice, this means that all the material which could be used to convince members of the public of the need for the reform, are inaccessible to everyone bar authorized civil servants.

The move has been criticized from all sides, even by members of the government’s base, coming as the latest episode in what has been an altogether shambolic attempt to pass the pension reform.

Opposition senator Randolfe Rodrigues, who once dubbed the government as a “spectacle of incompetence,” claimed that the measure to keep the pension reform studies under lock and key shows that “the truth is the government’s real enemy.”

Meanwhile, members of President Jair Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party (PSL) have also joined in, claiming there is no reason for the studies and reports to be made confidential.

The seal was discovered when reporters from newspaper Folha de S. Paulo filed a request via Brazil’s Access to Information Act to see the studies which provided the foundation for the pension reform bill. In response, the newspaper was told by the Ministry of the Economy that it had drafted technical studies, but they...