Interview: the impact of the pandemic on the legislative agenda
Specialist in advocacy, Glaucia Barros analyses how the public health emergency caused by Covid-19 could threaten public participation in the approval of laws
Glaucia Barros is a director at Fundação Avina in Brazil and is in charge of communication at Rede de Advocacy Colaborativo (Photo: personal archive)
The social conditions imposed by the new coronavirus pandemic have greatly affected institutional relations. One of these is the way in which bills of law concerning the public health emergency are processed. While these need to be dealt with swiftly, this could limit public participation and dialogue with other players.
In order to understand the impact of this change on the legislative process, we talked to Glaucia Barros, director at Fundação Avina, an organisation that promotes sustainability through collaborative processes. Glaucia is also responsible for communication at RAC (Rede de Advocacy Colaborativo), that brings together civil society organisations like Conectas, in collective action on projects of public interest at the National Congress.
Read the complete interview here:
Conectas – What has the impact of the pandemic been on the National Congress human rights agenda?
Glaucia – At RAC, the matters that are demanding most attention in terms of human rights are: guaranteeing health and safety in prisons; conditions faced by immigrants and special attention to women and children who are suffering domestic violence, which has increased exponentially, with no appropriate response from Federal Government.
How have the Legislative Powers been working during ´quarantine´ (name given to refer to social isolation in Brazil)?
The Remote Deliberation System (Sistema de Deliberação Remota) introduced for both legislative houses has many flaws and uncertainties regarding how liaison with society and transparency in processing will be handled. So far, we have seen that the obligation announced by the presidents of the two houses to focus work involved in voting on matters strictly related to facing the emergency is being observed, but we have not received any information on how long this will last nor on the order of priority once these agendas end.
Congress responded to the Federal Government´s attempt to suspend the voting period for provisional measures because of the coronavirus outbreak with new rules to speed up the process. What is the possible impact of this on public participation?
One area of concern is the suspension of the committees where interaction with society takes place. Non-nomination of votes is equally complicated in terms of transparency in legal processes. During WebRAC [a series of RAC Webinars during the pandemic] in which we have interviewed senators, members of Congress and technical staff from both houses, we have been unable to obtain information on the measures being taken to reinstate participation procedures and transparency at the same level as before the introduction of the remote deliberation system. The responses we are getting are related to increasing the capacity of members of Congress who claim to be unfamiliar with communication via internet.
What are civil society´s proposals for transparent participative procedures during the emergency we are facing?
We have initiated online conversations with parliamentarians and technical staff with a view to obtaining information and offering assistance regarding suspension of the tools of Parlametria [the legislative monitoring system created by the organisations] and making way for conversations to re-establish proximity between organised advocacy groups and parliamentarians. In addition, we are adapting our communications methods with them for more pro-active use of social media networks on the internet.
