Lula warns allies that he will not deliver Padilha’s head to Arthur Lira – 04/30/2023

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) warned allies that he does not intend to remove the Chief Minister of Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha, from political coordination.

Lula did not like what he considers a public request to hand over Padilha’s head made by the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), in an interview with the newspaper “O Globo” published this Sunday, 30.

In the interview, Lira said that Padilha is not satisfying the government base. He demanded a decentralization of political coordination.

“[Padilha é] a fine and polite fellow, but who has had difficulties. It has not been reflected in a good satisfaction ratio. Maybe the class needs to decentralize more, trust more. If you centralize it, it holds a lot. There are a lot of difficulties, perhaps due to the time that the PT has been out of power”, said the president of the Chamber in the interview.

The statement was understood in Planalto as the password to hand over more authority to the leader of the PT in the Chamber, deputy José Guimarães (CE), whom Lira considers a faithful ally.

The Palace has information that, while commanding the secret Budget, Lira also distributed amendments among PT members to help them in last year’s election campaign.

With the end of the secret budget, as it existed in the last legislature, and with the division of the centrão into two parliamentary blocs, Lira lost power. Now he is trying to win him back with trusted interlocutors inside the Planalto Palace.

Padilha’s performance, trying to keep the release of the amendments under government control, has not pleased the president of the Chamber. The relationship worsened with the establishment of the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) into the coup acts of January 8.

Padilha, in the assessment of Arthur Lira’s allies, has listened too much to PT senators and, above all, to the MDB of the Senate, whose senator Renan Calheiros (AL) is quoted to join the CPMI. Lira and Renan are fierce opponents in Alagoas politics.

In the interview, the mayor made it clear that he will try to impose limits on Renan’s participation, regardless of the government:

“Senator Renan, if he wants to be president of the CPMI, will need votes. To be rapporteur, he will need to build an agreement. It does not depend on the government.”