Brazil’s bold step into transparency
In a world first, Brazil has decided to run the entirety of it’s public sector finances on a completely transparent and decentralised network. The move comes after a succession of three impeached presidents in a row, and a growing dissatisfaction with seemingly endless corruption scandals.
It all sparked from a record-breaking petition signed by more than 20 million Brazilians demanding the implementation of a system that tracked the flow of public spending. The proposal garnered minimal support in the political realm, but with pressure building up on the streets, the government was left with no other choice but to take it into consideration.
From then on every attempt to weaken the proposal as it made its rounds through both Congress and Senate was met with emphatic manifestations staged across the country. The people made it clear that they would not back down until it had been approved.
“The thing I don’t like about all this is the lack of trust the people have in us. It’s like they want to babysit us instead of letting us just do our job,” proclaimed Laércio Chuvas, a congressman whose family has been involved in Brazilian politics for over five generations and is an ardent critic of the proposal. Chuvas himself has had his name associated with Brazil’s latest scandal, where bribes amounting to 556 million reais were uncovered during the revamp of a port in the coastal city of Santos.
The rollout will be phased throughout Brazil’s massive territorial expanse, with every layer of government expected to be running on top of the network in four years time. At that point, any Brazilian citizen will be eligible to run the app that maintains the veracity of every transaction made with public money. Tampering with the ledger will be virtually impossible.
“People will be able to pinpoint exactly where their tax money is spent, down to the last penny. They will be able to see that four reais they contributed went into patching up the road in a neighbouring town, another two reais went into military spending for a base in the Amazon, sixty cents into their local school’s supply expenses, and so on,” says an enthusiastic Maristella Branco, one of the original authors of the proposal.
“The level of detail we will gain is incredibly exciting for us, and equally terrifying for politicians that up until today relied on operating in the shadows,” says Branco, pausing to contemplate the significance of it all, “This is a big win for the Brazilian people. This is a big win for democracy.”
Brazil’s president Michelle Demer is expected to promulgate the laws related to the proposal early next week, despite her many unsuccessful bids to derail it. If all goes according to plan — and the people finally have their way — the misuse of public money in Brazil will soon be a thing of the past.
