A San Pablo official announced increases for entities at a dinner surrounded by campaign posters

The municipal secretary of Social Assistance in San Pablo, Eliana Gomes, called together representatives of entities that depend on transfers from the mayor’s office to a dinner at which she announced a 5.5% adjustment for the sector, according to Folha de S.Paulo.

According to that outlet, the meeting took place on Thursday the 17th at Pizzaria Moraes, in the Bexiga neighborhood, and the hall was surrounded by campaign posters for the city’s first lady, Regina Nunes, a candidate for state deputy for the MDB, and for former Housing secretary Sidney Cruz, who is running for a federal seat.

Folha de S.Paulo reported that it had access to the invitation Gomes sent to the entities’ managers. It contained no electoral references and presented the event as a meeting to discuss the challenges and prospects of social assistance in the city.

The sector had been calling for a budget adjustment since last year and had staged a protest in front of the mayor’s office in August. Expectations of an announcement had grown after a decree published on Tuesday the 15th, which reallocated resources from other areas to social assistance.

According to Folha de S.Paulo‘s coverage, photos obtained by the newsroom showed campaign materials for Regina Nunes and Sidney Cruz, as well as a screen with campaign images. One of the people present told the newspaper that, upon seeing that material, the invitees understood the true nature of the event.

During the dinner, Gomes said the adjustment would be made official in the Official Gazette on Monday the 21st. Later, she posted a video on her social media in which she attributed the measure to Mayor Ricardo Nunes.

Sidney Cruz, a councilman on leave and mentioned as one of the mayor’s possible picks for the 2028 municipal succession, told Folha de S.Paulo that he learned of the meeting through the press inquiry and had no prior knowledge of it.

On the financing of the dinner, the mayor’s office first gave one version and then another. In an initial note, it said the event had been paid for by the secretary herself, without the use of public funds. Later, according to Folha de S.Paulo, it said the costs were covered by the guests themselves. The people consulted by the newspaper denied having paid, while an employee at the pizzeria said by phone that there were individual orders by table, although he did not know the details of the payments.

Asked about the episode, Ricardo Nunes’s team responded, according to Folha de S.Paulo, that the measure had no condition of political-electoral support and that the mayor’s office does not direct, authorize or endorse calls for people linked to the public administration to take part in activities of that kind.

Sources

• Folha de S.Paulo

Sobre esta nota. Written by El Notero with assistance from artificial intelligence, based on what was published by the cited outlet. El Notero did not do its own reporting on this fact.