Approval of Brazil's Upcoming May 11 Public Holiday Uncertain

Sources: Agência O Globo and Brazil public holidays. It is becoming less and less likely that the May 11, 2007, one-off public holiday voted by the Senate last month, will come to pass. Accordingly, we have changed its status in our database of Brazil's public holidays to "tentative".

Analysis: Recall that the bill declaring this public holiday was initiated in the Senate, last month, to coincide with the May 11, 2007, visit of Pope Benedict XVI in Brazil on the occasion of the canonization of Frei Galvão, the first Brazilian saint, ever (our post of March 28).

At the time, the final approval of this bill looked like a foregone conclusion. However, dissenting voices started to be heard almost immediately, leading some to propose reducing its importance from full national public holiday (feriado nacional) to optional day off (ponto facultativo), as detailed in our post of April 10.

Then, in a slightly weird episode (our post of April 12), the Council of Brazilian Bishops, came out with an almost anti-endorsement of the idea, insisting that the public holiday, if it came to pass should be considered as a lay, national holiday, that had nothing to do with the Church. To further confuse the issue, the Council floated the idea that perhaps the May 11 public holiday could be observed only in the São Paulo municipal area, to facilitate traffic.

If one also remembers that Brazil recently converted 3 public holidays' status from "ponto facultativo" to "feriado nacional" (our post of March 7), one can easily imagine how pro-business deputies on the right, and deputies attached to the separation of State and Church, on the left, joined forces to defeat this proposed bill.

Today, the reporter of the bill before parliament, came out squarely against it, and proposed instead a simple homage, stripped of any religious connotation (homenagem cultural e não religiosa), to the man as a citizen (homenagem ao "cidadão Frei Galvão"). Voting will occur in the next few days, and we will post an update as soon as we have anything definite. In the meanwhile, as mentioned above, we have changed its status in our database of Brazil's public holidays to "tentative".