{"id":29222,"date":"2016-06-02T14:43:03","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T17:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=29222"},"modified":"2016-06-02T14:43:03","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T17:43:03","slug":"what-to-expect-from-the-new-ministry-of-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=29222","title":{"rendered":"What to Expect from the New Ministry of Cities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

For the original article by Raquel Rolnik<\/a>\u00a0in Portuguese published by\u00a0Yahoo! News\u00a0<\/em>click<\/em> here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last month\u00a0the\u00a0process to impeach President Dilma Rousseff was confirmed by the Senate and, on the same day, ministers from Michel Temer\u2019s interim government were instated. Congressman Bruno Ara\u00fajo from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) was chosen to lead the urban policy of the country, and is now responsible for the Ministry of Cities<\/a>. Regardless of the discussion on the legitimacy of this government, a debate which is far from over, what can we expect from this new minister?<\/p>\n

Based on the congressman\u2019s trajectory, who gained notoriety when he cast the last vote needed to approve the impeachment in the House of Representatives, and considering his first statements after being nominated minister, it\u2019s worth asking: should we expect changes, more of the same, or an extension of what society has rejected and that was, in theory, the popular motivation behind the request to impeach the president?<\/p>\n

In his first statements, Ara\u00fajo said\u00a0he will work towards public-private partnerships (PPPs) to bolster programs such as (the federal housing program)\u00a0Minha Casa Minha Vida\u00a0(MCMV)<\/a>.\u00a0According to him: \u201cWe must dispense with the ideological bonds and bureaucracy that impede the progress of the (housing) works.\u201d He also said that the country needs to overcome \u201ca prejudiced relationship on the part of the previous government with\u00a0capital’s potential for participating in important social programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, the new minister\u2019s discourse appears to show deep ignorance of MCMV, which is entirely based on a relationship with the private sector. In this program, it is the construction companies\u2013therefore, private companies\u2013that define where, how, and what to build. The role of the government is limited to defining the minimum conditions for the products that these companies offer and to lend feasibility to the purchase of homes produced through public subsidies to the buyers. In this case, there is then no \u201cbureaucracy\u201d nor \u201cideological bonds\u201d to hinder the program, much less a \u201cprejudiced relationship with capital,\u201d since it is the civil construction sector that was the main player involved in assembling and undertaking MCMV.<\/p>\n

We can then infer that the new minister, by proposing more PPPs in the area of urban development, is referring to some examples of structured PPPs, in particular those for preparing cities for the World Cup<\/a> and the Olympics<\/a>, which have always had the active participation of the major developers, precisely those that have been under investigation in the Operation Car Wash<\/a> process, as well as others with less visibility in the media.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

An example of \u201csuccess\u201d would be the PPP for the Porto Maravilha<\/a> project in the Port Region<\/a>\u00a0of Rio de Janeiro. This is a PPP where a consortium, comprised of three construction companies (Odebrecht, OAS, and Carioca Engenharia), will develop all of the urban transformations and manage the area for 15 years. 100%\u00a0of the funds to finance the operation (including the works and payment for the consortium\u2019s fees) come from public funds, by means of an injection of over R$4 billion from the FGTS, the government severance payment fund.<\/p>\n

As the total cost of the operation exceeds R$8 billion in this PPP, the remaining R$4 billion will be raised through real estate speculation<\/a>\u00a0on public land. This is because, aside from the injection of billions of reais from the FGTS, public lands were made available (70% of the area of the old port zone of Rio de Janeiro was public) to be exploited by the consortium, in partnership with land developers and investment funds, by launching real estate products such as corporate towers and hotels\u2013that is, only for activities with high returns on investment, and not necessarily what the city of Rio most needs at the moment.<\/p>\n

In short, in an operation such as this, what we have that is \u201cprivate\u201d is basically the profit of the real estate developers, investment funds, and construction companies from the consortium, since the costs are entirely public. There is no major difference between this model and hiring construction companies for large projects and public services, which has infamously been the biggest source of incestuous relationships between the state and the private sector, and is closely tied to our political-electoral model, as we have seen.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the case of the PPP for Porto Maravilha\u00a0has been the topic of a number of news reports<\/a> on the bribes paid by companies from the consortium to the ex-president of the House of Representatives, Eduardo Cunha<\/a> from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party\u00a0(PMBD), who allegedly arranged for the FGTS funds for the operation. These companies are being investigated in Operation Car Wash. The press has also reported<\/a> the new minister\u2019s ties with Odebrecht, one of the participants in the consortium, which according to reports financed his campaign in 2010 as well as campaigns for mayoral\u00a0candidates connected to him in 2012.\u00a0It is not yet known if this took place legally or illegally. It\u2019s always worth remembering that payment for the favor of campaign donations occurs through preferential contracting of these companies for large public works.<\/p>\n

Now the PPPs, hailed by the new minister as the \u201csolution\u201d to the urban development problems, are nothing more than an extension of the promiscuous relationship between the private sector and the state, which is essentially a privatization of public funds and resources, and also makes it possible for certain political groups to remain in power. This is the manner in which the players directly involved in these initiatives have behaved until now. And they unfortunately are the same players of this much touted \u201cchange.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original article by Raquel Rolnik\u00a0in Portuguese published by\u00a0Yahoo! News\u00a0click here. Last month\u00a0the\u00a0process to impeach President Dilma Rousseff was confirmed by the Senate and, on the same day, ministers from […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":29226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1854,1736,335,1330,328],"tags":[2079,1261,140,2009,698,157,367,5,374,148,146,703,141,529,149,167],"writer":[47],"translator":[338],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-29222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-housingwatch","8":"category-1736","9":"category-policies","10":"category-translation","11":"category-understanding-rio","12":"tag-car-wash-scandal","13":"tag-central-rio","14":"tag-corruption","15":"tag-eduardo-cunha","16":"tag-federal-government","17":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","18":"tag-odebrecht","19":"tag-olympics","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-port-region","22":"tag-porto-maravilha","23":"tag-private-sector","24":"tag-privatization","25":"tag-public-works","26":"tag-public-private-partnership","27":"tag-world-cup","28":"writer-raquel-rolnik","29":"translator-carolyn-oliveira"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29222"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=29222"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=29222"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=29222"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=29222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}