The Man Holding Brazil Together Is Not Jair Bolsonaro

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- After getting wind of a possible congressional proposal to strip him of some powers, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro complained that the country’s lawmakers want to make him a ceremonial head of state, like the queen of England. That hasn’t happened yet, but when it comes to setting the nation’s legislative agenda, it’s clear who has the real power: Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of the nation’s lower house.

On July 11, the 49-year-old politician from the center-right Democratas party pushed a revamp of Brazil’s generous social security system past its first and highest legislative hurdle. Pension reform is a necessity that has eluded four previous administrations. Before successfully getting it through the lower house, Maia had spent months uniting 17 fractious parties to finally deliver a measure expected to save almost 1 trillion reais ($267 billion) over the next decade. “Rodrigo Maia built a parliamentary base, which the government doesn’t do and doesn’t have,” says Alexandre Frota, a congressman from Bolsonaro’s own Social Liberal Party (PSL). “Brazil is going to thank him in the future.”

Bolsonaro has squandered much of his political capital because of his belligerence and penchant for fighting culture wars. That leaves Maia to deliver or frustrate the government’s agenda—and to hold Brazil’s democracy together. Maia himself says he’s merely filling a void. “Until now, the executive power has not put forward an agenda for the main issues, from my point of view,” he said in a text message interview.

The speaker has embraced pro-market aspects of Bolsonaro’s program but blocked some of the president’s more inflammatory proposals, including a decree to loosen gun control laws. Maia also delayed anticrime plans pushed by Justice Minister Sergio Moro, a hero to rightists for his role in imprisoning former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on corruption charges and an ally of Bolsonaro’s.

Nowhere have Maia’s skills been more evident than in his handling of the social security bill—a flagship economic policy, albeit one Bolsonaro himself has embraced with scant enthusiasm. Brazil spends more on pensions than most of its peers and offers favorable terms to its well-paid civil servants, many of whom retire in their 50s. The retirement fund runs on a deficit, which drives up Brazil’s public debt and risks consuming the entirety of the budget. Education receives only a tenth of what’s spent on pensions. With a rapidly aging population and a constitutional limit on overall federal spending, the current system threatens to devastate Latin America’s biggest economy.

Maia had to steer the bill down a perilous path through the Chamber of Deputies. The body boasts no fewer than 26 parties, and the PSL itself represents only about 10% of its lawmakers. After a final vote in the lower house, the bill will move to the Senate in August. “Without Rodrigo Maia, we wouldn’t have gotten to this moment,” PSL Congressman Waldir Soares de Oliveira said as he declared his party’s support.

Born in Santiago, Chile, where his father was in exile during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Maia attended college in Rio de Janeiro but didn’t earn a degree. After a brief banking career, he followed his father into politics and is in his sixth term representing the state of Rio. Pale, paunchy, and soft-spoken to the point of seeming shy, he occasionally displays a nervous facial tic—and a ferocious temper. Once, during a protest of a labor-reform bill on the house floor, he cursed one lawmaker and shoved another.

First elected as speaker in 2016 after the polarizing impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s successor, Maia proved adept at handling the house’s warring factions. Those include some who loathe Bolsonaro and support Lula and Rousseff’s Workers’ Party; others who support Bolsonaro and loathe the Workers’ Party; and the amorphous “big center,” a group of ideologically flexible parties that gravitates toward money or power.

His failures have been few: Maia is shrewd enough to avoid scheduling votes on issues he’s unlikely to win. In 2017, however, he suffered a narrow defeat in the lower house in a vote over changes to a labor reform bill. Undeterred, he scheduled another vote on the same question 24 hours later and won. Opposition lawmakers condemned him as a coup-monger, but the tactic worked. Since Bolsonaro came to power, Maia has “embraced the economic agenda of the government, he’s put a brake on the values agenda,” says Thomaz Favaro, lead Brazil analyst at consulting firm Control Risks.

Right before the final vote on pension reform, Maia assailed those who attack Brazil’s institutions, a pointed reference to Bolsonaro’s more radical supporters, who want to retire the courts and Congress and render all government power to Bolsonaro. “There will be no private investment, even with a tax reform, even with a pension reform, if we don’t have a strong democracy,” he said. “Long-term investors don’t invest in a country that attacks its institutions.” Maia wept as his supporters gave him a standing ovation.

Effective but uncharismatic, Maia may have a ceiling on his ambitions. Although he’s been reelected repeatedly, he won his latest term with relatively few votes. When he ran for mayor in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, he garnered less than 3% support. “What politicians see in politicians isn’t necessarily what the people see,” says PSL Senator Major Olímpio. Maia’s biggest accomplishment may be making the traditionally compliant lower house a force of its own. “In the past, the legislature was treated as a kind of appendix of the executive,” says Michel Temer, himself a former three-time house speaker, who became president after Rousseff’s fall. “Congress is going through a great moment.”

Marcos Pereira, deputy speaker of the lower house and former minister, says the legislature is a bulwark against those who would return the nation to autocracy. “This is democracy, and not handing over power to the hands of a sovereign,” he says. “Bolsonaro’s voters don’t understand this.”

Bolsonaro’s son Carlos has repeatedly whipped up his massive social media following against Maia. At one point, Maia threatened to walk away from the pension bill in protest. When the pension measure passed, Maia made no reference to Bolsonaro. He didn’t need to. “Maia’s come out stronger from this,” Favaro says.

“Pressure, criticism is always important so that we can reflect on what we are doing,” Maia said in a text message. “What sometimes bothers me is that there is a group of people around the president that is very radical, that isn’t really against me or deputy A, B, or C, or this or that senator or Supreme Court judge. They’re against the institutions.” He added, “They’re a movement, an antidemocratic fringe and this doesn’t pressure me, but it does worry me.” —With Rachel Gamarski and Mario Sergio Lima

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net, Howard Chua-EoanBruce DouglasStephen Merelman

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