The clock flashed 7:52 pm when House Speaker Rodrigo Maia left his seat and took the stand to address his peers, who feverishly chanted “Rodrigo! Rodrigo!” By that moment, he knew that the pension reform, albeit watered down, was in the bag.
Mr. Maia made sure to say that the reform was a victory of Congress—not the government. And he praised the main targets of President Bolsonaro’s acolytes: traditional center-right parties (deemed as purveyors of “old politics”), the Supreme Court, and even the opposition. A few jabs directly targeted the president: “Our role is to recover the strength of Congress,...
