This is a CTP of initiative: Participatory Budgeting Fortaleza (Brazil)
The CPT is about the change of Fortaleza´s municipal governments and its consequences for the PB.
The Participatory Budget Fortaleza was implemented in 2005, when a new mayor affiliated with the Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT (Workers Party) was elected for the municipal government. This municipal government remained in management for two periods, 2005-2008 and 2009-2012, when a new mayor affiliated with another party, the Partido Democrático Trabalhista - PDT (Democratic Labor Party) was elected. This fact also changed popular participation in Fortaleza.
This alternation of power over the workers' party has been common in Brazil. The party has been losing elections for mayors, governors and culminated in the impeachment of the President of Brazil, Dilma Russef, in the year 2015.
The Workers Party is traditionally a leftist party in which popular participation in government is its goal. This government in the city of Fortaleza has changed the logic of municipal management, because it called on the people to decide on the budget together.
With the entry of a new government in the city of Fortaleza, the PB was discontinued and it was only in the third year of the new government that social participation came back.
For the interviewee, the discourse of participation remained, but in her point of view there was no tradition or desire that popular participation would remain, as stated: "In the PT government social participation was a very strong issue: to empower the population, connecting government and population, to break the logic of political manipulation. In this government, the dialogue is the same, but the political project has no roots among the people. There is no priority to care for the most vulnerable areas. There is also no history of building with the people from the places where the party rules (…) When the party changed from the city hall to the current government, there were the first years without the PB and then it returned. The PB has lost all its meaning and its characterization in this administration".
According to the interviewee, before there was the PB cycle with all its stages and all with the participation of the people: "We had all this network of advisers and delegates, social movements, yet then there was nothing. The PB was discontinued”.
In the year 2016 the city hall held some popular assemblies, but the old OP participants think that the assemblies had no similarity to those that were held before. Some of the people were not called and the character of the decision making process changed significantly. People do not get to decide on the specifics that they decided on before, the so called demands (as a result of the assemblies in the PB cycle, there was a list of investment priorities that the city hall held): "This is no longer PB, they dismounted the Popular Participation Coordination (established in 2008 which gathered together PB and articulated with organized social movements), we were not invited, there was no disclosure of the assemblies”.
All the municipal governments changed after the elections: the mayor, the secretaries and many technicians who were hired by the previous government left at the end of the management. Thus, the co-production of this CTP is held by these actors: the mayor and the PB team, which is organized within the Secretaria de Planejamento, Orçamento e Monitoramento (Secretariat of Planning, Budget and Monitoring).
January 2013 – Mayor change - the new administration took office in the City Hall of Fortaleza.
February 2013 – The new team receives the list of PB demands - The city hall received the multi-annual plan from the previous government. They questioned the list of demands which to the city hall had not represented a plan but only represented a list.The Plano Plurianual (PPA) - Multi-Annual Plan (MAP) in Brazil is regulated by the Brazilian Constitution as the duties of municipal, state and federal governments. It is held every 4 years (the period of one government between elections) and is carried out over the first year of the government, covering the first year of the next government. It is also approved by law, i.e. it is the elected candidate's responsibility to carry it out. The plan includes all actions and also its budget. In order to not to affect the guidelines that are contained within it, it is only possible to make investments in strategic programs referred to in the wording of the PPA for the current period.
March 2013 – Building a strategic agenda - The mayor and his team built a strategic agenda that gave a lot of emphasis to participatory planning. Included in this plan (which, according to the elected mayor, they didn´t have in the previous municipal government) is the monitoring of results.
June 2014 – Beginning of Digital PB – In Brazil, the PB is known to be a participatory process for the poor. The middle class does not participate in its meetings cycle or in their votes. The creation of the digital PB is part of the city hall´s participation strategy to include all sections of the population in all decisions of the municipal government.
March 2014 – Start a new Participatory Planning Cycle - Changes to the architecture of participation - Officially it was no longer called PB, it was named “Ciclo de Planejamento Participativo” (Participatory Planning Cycle) and the Coordenadoria de Paticipação (Participation Coordination) was created. According to the city hall, these changes extended popular participation beyond the PB.
April 2015 - PB assemblies begin. For the interviewee, these assemblies were disfigured. The PB network was not invited and there was nothing to decide: "There was a complete deletion of the PB in the first two years of this government. It resurged, but there was not a feeling in the city, there was no disclosure of events, the previous network didn’t run. There is no longer a process of social participation in the city today; there is no social policy participation".
The PB participant’s traditional network no longer has political space for deliberation.
According to the interviewee, currently the only forums for participation are the Conferences of the Federal Government (education, health, youth and human rights) which also occur at municipal and state levels and of which the PB network already participated.
There is dissatisfaction from the actors of the PB network, who expressed this dissatisfaction at conferences, as stated:
"There is dissatisfaction from the population as well. Users of youth public policies, for example. The people of OP were closely linked with the process of participation ... community leaders, groups and movements left the conferences. This is an issue but there is nothing to do. They were all demobilized with the discontinuity (...) I think there is a co-opting of the sectors that were from the PB seeking an approach with the current government. This approach returns a bit to the manipulation that was in the city before. You have a problem, talk with the leadership and it is solved. It is not open to the people. There is no formation process. No one from the movements is aware of this. What justification is there that the PB has not been a priority in the first 2 years? What money does it have? Is there no specific coordinating? ...”
The change of government through an election which changes the political party in power is a project change a lot of the time. So for the interviewee these changes were already on the horizon:
"The government has no social participation plan or inversion model logic. The PB is an inversion of logic, you call the people to decide. This is not the history of this government, it has no such direction. People already knew it was going to end. In my opinion it did end, it no longer exists. The people in the communities that I have a relationship with have no participation process that is stimulated by the city hall".
The interviewee is disappointed with the changes and the fragility of the changes of policies in power. This discontinuity shows her the fragility and what she has learned in this area is as follows:
"Social innovations are very fragile. If they do not become state policies they will depend on the wills of governments. The conception comes from us, right? Or society takes responsibility for that experience or they end up left out on the way. Here civil society could have taken responsibility and maintained it, it could have pushed to maintain it. Before we had a bus, snacks, support for participation in the PB. I was a minor. I had a person to pick me up. When the state does not make it viable, it does not happen".
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