Donation or investment? Alternatives to the unequal financing of electoral campaigns
Michael Freitas Mohallem
The 2014 presidential election will be remembered as one of the most disputed Brazilian elections of all time. But if the vote race was narrow, the same can not be said of the most important behind-the-scenes dispute in the elections: the financial viability of the campaigns. The total funding of the presidential candidacies that disputed the second round in 2014 exceeded 800 million Reais, almost twice the value obtained in 2010, and approximately ten times the one collected in 2002. This remarkable increase of the available resources for campaigns is not due to the legislative innovation or civic impulse of Brazilian society. What we have seen is the consolidation of the influence of economic power on political parties, parliamentarians and governments.
In addition to the distortion of coorporations participation in the elections, newspaper headlines alert us on every political cycle that the electoral financing model adopted by Brazil favors the potentially illegal approach between political agents and companies with direct economic interests on the State's performance. From the "Dwarf Budget" scheme in 1993 until the recent Operation Lava Jato, several corruption cases have at some point in their entanglements the handshake between donor and candidate.
Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to argue that the existing electoral financing model affects the fairness of the dispute between candidates. It is, in part, responsible for a distorted democracy and has served particularly economic groups. Apparently, its unfeasibility has already been perceived by the Supreme Court, by relevant groups in the National Congress and by important sectors of society that press for new legislative experience.
This paper presents alternatives capable of responding to the different legal aspects that allow the disproportionate participation of legal entities of private law and of individuals of greater economic capacity in the definition of the Brazilian political will.
