São Paulo – The Bolsonaro government published, this Friday (5), in the Official Diary of the Union, an ordinance that blocks the Culture Incentive Law, a new name for the Rouanet Law, in states or municipalities that have social isolation measures against covid-19, such as the lockdown. According to the decree, the Special Secretariat for Culture will only analyze proposals for cultural projects that involve interaction with the public. However, cultural projects will only receive support if they are in regions “where there is no restriction on circulation, curfew, lockdown or other actions that prevent the realization of the project ”.

Ordinance 124 is signed by the negationist military police officer André Porciúncula, who currently serves as the national secretary of Promotion and Incentive to Culture. The measure is valid for 15 days, “it can be extended or suspended, depending on whether or not the restrictive measures are maintained in the referred entities of the federation”.

Reply

To counter the ordinance that hampers the implementation of the Rouanet Law, during the lockdown of the cities, federal deputy Jandira Feghali (PCdoB-RJ) presented the Legislative Decree Project (PDL) 102/2021, which aims to uphold the rule.

In her justification, the parliamentarian affirms that the cultural sector suffered a strong impact due to the pandemic and the social isolation measures, which prohibit agglomerations and face-to-face presentations. According to her, contrary to the needs of the cultural area and in an unconstitutional way, the aforementioned ordinance “imposes prior censorship by restricting the analysis only to cultural proposals, which involve face-to-face interaction with the public”.

Jandira also states that, in practice, the government “encourages face-to-face activities in a serious moment of the pandemic and refuses to analyze those that could be carried out safely and for the benefit of the sector and society”. In an authoritarian and unjustified way, the measure threatens culture, health and the Constitution. We understand that this is unacceptable and does not deserve to prosper, which is why I request the support of the noble parliamentarians for the abolition of the said ordinance ”, he said in the PDL.

The pandemic has worsened in Brazil since last Monday (1st). Yesterday (4), 1,699 new victims of the disease were registered, which led the country to the mark of 260 thousand deaths. Several states, such as São Paulo, have enacted lockdown. On the same day, the president reacted aggressively. “No more freshness and mimimi. How long will they be crying? ”, He said, speaking about the isolation policies and restrictions of state governments to contain the spread of contamination.