Parties want amnesty for underfunding women and black candidates

Brazil’s largest political parties, both in government and opposition, are moving quickly to approve a self-amnesty for failing to enforce funding rules for women and black candidates in the 2022 elections.

Back in May, House lawmakers approved by a vote of 45-10 a constitutional amendment proposal (known as PEC 9) to waive all sanctions for non-compliance with sex- or race-based campaign financing rules. Under a law approved in early 2022, parties must spend at least 30 percent of their campaign funds on women candidates, with the proportion increasing in accordance with the party’s gender balance. If 40 percent of the candidates are women, then 40 percent of funds must go to women candidates.

Similarly, a Superior Electoral Court resolution — later upheld by the Supreme Court — ruled that campaign funds, as well as radio and TV ad time, must be allocated proportionally to black candidates.

Most of Brazil’s ten major political parties massively failed to comply with both rules. A survey by the newspaper O Globo shows that although all of them had more than 30 percent of both women and black candidates, seven parties underfunded both quotas. Only the right-wing União Brasil party managed to proportionally fund its black candidates, while the right-wing Progressives and Republicans parties were the only ones to provide proportional funding to women. 

Crucially, both the Workers’ Party and Liberal Party — the parties of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former President Jair Bolsonaro respectively — failed to...