Analysis of the Benches in the Chamber of Deputies
The graphic available in the link below comes from an article by the Investigative Reporting and Journalism Agency, whose authors are Étore Medeiros and Bruno Fonseca. The article can be found at the link: “The Chamber Benches”, on February 18, 2016.
The file with the information can be accessed by anyone, however, it is in CSV format, and will have to be reconfigured for reading by graphic production systems.
Our work was to extract the information from the csv file, change it to adapt it to graphical analysis tools, remodeling it for this presentation.
“According to the authors, federal deputies from the Agricultural Parliamentary Front (FPA), one of the largest and most organized groups in the Chamber of Deputies, meet weekly during lunch in a mansion in Lago Sul, an upscale neighborhood of Brasília. Also released in advance to the press, the “menu” – the name given by the FPA's own advisors to the topics that will be debated – on Tuesday (16) included the taxation of agricultural products, the compensation of properties when expropriated and the indication of members for the permanent committees of the Chamber of Deputies, whose composition is renewed each year. In addition to the Agriculture board, ruralists are paying particular attention to two others: the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) and the Environment.
“We are going to try to get as many people as possible to debate the environmental issue in Brazil, not in an ideological or radical way, but in a balanced way. Let’s try, yes, to have a large majority”, he told Public, após o almoço, o deputado federal Nilson Leitão (PSDB-MT). Vice-presidente da FPA, ele é o relator da CPI da Funai e do Incra, that intends to raid federal agencies, e presidiu a comissão especial que em 2015 aprovou a PEC 215 – que inclui o Congresso Nacional no processo de demarcação de terras indígenas. “Nós vencemos na parte da comissão; agora é tentar colocar logo em plenário, ver o que a Câmara vai decidir e fazer com que o Senado também possa acelerar o processo”, diz, sobre a PEC 215, cuja aprovação em definitivo é um dos principais objetivos da frente para 2016 – por mais que ela seja taxada por muitos juristas como unconstitutional.
Além da FPA, diversas outras bancadas atuam diariamente no Congresso Nacional, reunindo deputados com ideologias, motivações ou objetivos semelhantes, ou ainda com financiadores do mesmo setor. A dinâmica de funcionamento desses conjuntos temáticos é heterogênea. Nem todos possuem estrutura ou estratégia semelhante aos ruralistas – que contam com coordenadores, agitadores e negociadores entre os seus inscritos –, e em muitos casos a formação da bancada só fica clara com o desenrolar de pautas específicas ou com a ajuda dos dados de doação de campanha.
To show which parliamentarians defend which interests, the Public raised the composition of eleven of the most active benches. In addition to the ruralists, who have 207 deputies, we mapped other giants in the Chamber: the evangelical (196), the business (208), the contractors and construction companies (226) and the relatives (238), the largest grouping in the House – confirming the trend of increasing the number of deputies with political family members.”
Analyzing the files, I came across several technical inconsistencies, which, to be honest, are sometimes difficult to notice or verify.
Therefore, the graph, in fact, is just a graphic sampling of the data already publicly available on the aforementioned website and in the annals of the Chamber of Deputies
Chart analyzing the participation of parliamentarians on the Benches of the Chamber of Deputies
