Justice André Mendonça of the TSE, Brazil's top electoral court, on Thursday (Sept. 17) rejected a request by federal congressman Zé Trovão to suspend the 15.04% increase in the Bolsa Família cash-transfer program announced hours earlier by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Assigned as rapporteur of the case, Mendonça closed the lawsuit without ruling on its merits and found that the lawmaker, who is running for reelection in the southern state of Santa Catarina, lacked standing to sue a presidential candidate, a race contested nationwide.
The justice said TSE precedent requires both sides to run for office in the same electoral district before one candidate can file such a complaint against another, a standard the court has applied in recent cases of congressional candidates challenging matters tied to the presidential race, as Folha de S.Paulo reported. Mendonça stressed that closing the case does not amount to an endorsement of the government's measure.
"I note that recognizing the lack of standing does not entail any ruling on the legality or constitutionality of the Bolsa Família increase, nor on whether it falls under Article 73, paragraph 10, of Law No. 9,504/1997," the justice wrote in the decision, quoted by G1.
How the case reached the court
On Thursday morning, Lula announced a 15.04% adjustment that raises the program's minimum payment from 600 reais to 691 reais starting in October. The floor had been frozen since 2022, when the government of Jair Bolsonaro raised the benefit by 50%, from 400 to 600 reais, also weeks before a presidential vote, as BBC News Brasil recalled. The average payment rises from about 675 to 777 reais.
Hours after the announcement, made 17 days before the first round, Zé Trovão, an ally of presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, filed a complaint with the TSE accusing the president of abuse of political power during the campaign. In the petition, cited by G1, the congressman argued that "the intervention of the Electoral Justice" was "necessary" to stop the administrative machinery and public funds from being used to "undermine equal opportunities among candidates." He asked Mendonça to provisionally block the new values until a final ruling or the end of the election, and argued that the measure's national reach and the number of beneficiaries could sway voters' choices at the ballot.
The government's defense
The government rejects any electoral reading of the move. The Finance Ministry said, according to G1, that the adjustment only restores inflation losses from recent years and does not amount to an increase in the benefit, and Planning Minister Bruno Moretti denied any link to the vote. "The Bolsa Família law gives us authorization to make the inflation adjustment, to protect the purchasing power of beneficiaries, the most vulnerable population of this country," Moretti said, citing a cumulative INPC inflation of 15.04% since the current version of the program was created in 2023. The government's legal counsel, the Advocacia-Geral da União, says that 2023 law authorizes the executive branch to correct benefit values and bars any reduction. The Planning Ministry puts the cost at 5.8 billion reais this year and 22.7 billion reais in 2027.
The ruling ends the complaint filed on Thursday, InfoMoney reported, but the court did not rule on whether the increase complies with electoral rules. The next date in the matter is practical: payments at the new floor begin on Oct. 19, between the first round and a possible runoff.