No one with common sense ever cultivated doubts about the difficulties that awaited the Lula’s third term (Candide was trapped in the pages of Voltaire). They were announced and carried out, one by one, starting with the Dilma Rousseff government, with the decisive participation of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and, in it, of the ineffable Gilmar Mendes, both fundamental pieces in the machinery of the impeachment and in the monster that the call became Car washa collection of judges and prosecutors from the Public Ministry (MP) whose crimes, now in the public domain, are gradually being proven.
Clear as the midday sun was the alliance of life and death of backwardness, bringing together minor politics in the same samburá (the “Center”), Faria Lima and the structural reactionism of the barracks. Despite the “Letter to Brazilians” of 2002 and his first two governments, Lula is always the “hot spot”: the opponent to be defeated by the heirs of the Big House. This was the case in the 2022 electoral process, and this is how it would be in the government, with attempts to prevent him from taking office having failed.
The coalition of parties and political and economic forces that Lula put together, with the skill that no one denies him, paved the way for the third presidential election, notable even in the meagerness of its numbers. But the successful arc of electoral alliances proved insufficient to ensure smooth governance, as seen on a daily basis. The dance of the portfolios – a ministry that is always about to be – is just one of the manifestations of the government’s party-political insecurity, a precursor to the institutional crisis, seen as the contradiction between an Executive Power with a progressive nature and a Legislature that claims to be reactionary , sower of delay, beneficiary of the bad policy that is fed from the donkeys of the treasury. The negotiations are carried out under the terms of the Republic that we have, and they do not ask us for ethical sanction, but the measure of its effectiveness: guaranteeing the government, the first duty of a head of State, as the Florentine genius recalled.
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The exercise of politics, everyone knows, does not take place in outer space and is not limited to the free choice of agents: between desire and reality, there is the so-called “correlation of forces”, which conditions the actions of one and the other. But it is not about empire: man is always the subject of the historical process, because he can always change the objective conditions, those bequeathed by the past. Faced with the historical fact, he defines himself and chooses his destiny. This is the challenge that present history poses to Lula, who needs to be careful to avoid the risk of becoming a prisoner of circumstances, because, as the negotiators know, today’s agreement does not have a pre-established validity and its term could be at any time. anytime.
It is similar to Faust’s pact with the devil. This care is all the more precious as the negotiations take place behind the shutters and in the absence of any public discussion. Having to and being able to explain himself, as he has everything to say, Lula transfers the job to the mainstream press, which thus enjoys its role of disinforming.
The people, who watch everything without understanding, because nothing is said to them, remain silent, and the president, according to the press, asks why “there is no more popular mobilization”, after announcing that “the Centrão does not exist”. Now, President, the “Centrão” exists, and not only does it exist, it also controls Congress (on which the Executive depends) and, under its personal management, installs itself in our government. And perhaps in this fact it can be said to the president that the people are not mobilized because they are not correctly informed, much less called to action.
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At no point did the president address the country to explain the government crisis and the need to reconcile with opponents. Given this satisfaction – a duty both political and ethical – the president would have stimulated the mobilization that he currently regrets, he would have been stronger, and, without a doubt, he would have reduced the high price already paid and still to be paid to the forces of delay with who, unable to wield weapons, gave a warm welcome.
An explanation for this claimed absence of the masses, the president can find in the concrete fact that, in the tenth month of a four-year term, we still do not have a trustworthy ministry, which is how a government presents itself. This ministry that still balances on the Esplanada, ten months old, tinkered with, tinkered with and always waiting for new moves, remains a pro-tempore cabinet, an expectation of what we don’t know is to come. And, just as it is altered, according to games of lesser interests, without following political-programmatic lines, it becomes a ministry without a defined feature, like summer clouds: according to pressure. How can we demand the necessary mobilization of the masses without announcing a direction for it, beyond the president’s notorious and much applauded option to combat poverty and hunger?
“Union and reconstruction” it is a slogan reasonable, but far from suggesting the country project that is required from the government for national salvation, after an electoral campaign that, necessarily linked to the democratic issue, did not give rise to programmatic debate. Tactical policies, such as Bolsa Família, await the concert of a strategic program that, constituting an organic and logical whole, addresses the short, medium and long term. This could still be the great legacy of the center-left government, in addition to democratic consolidation.
The only way to preserve their achievements, and this should be the expectation of a good statesman, is to make them popular heritage. Why disregard this alternative, exactly when our government is harassed by the system?
The movement of the masses, like everything else, is not an effect without a cause, it is not an autonomous political phenomenon, it is not the work of chance and, when it is not an instrument of fascist power, it depends on subjective elements (the mobilizing slogan) and objectives (their level of political organization).
We are faced with a dialectical relationship: mobilization depends on slogans that are both concrete and correct, and State policies are only sustainable to the extent that they constitute the collective’s heritage. Therefore, they need to be discussed didactically with social movements: what, however, is the social support that the current portfolio negotiations in search of parliamentary support have (or can have)?
On the other hand, and I return to another truism, it is not possible to maintain the foreign policy, which is still, today as in Lula’s two previous terms, the best and most coherent thing that was offered to the country, without discussing it with society, to involve it in the project of national sovereignty. How can we face larval violence without discussing its social roots with society? How can we face reactionaryism and political interventionism in the barracks without discussing with society which armed forces the country lacks?
It is not enough to look at the time aimlessly, unjustifiably surprised, and in the end discover that we are a conservative society and, having revealed the open secret, accept the scenario offered as an edict from the gods, before which mortals, and we are all, only All that remains is to live together, with the rebellious spirits calmed down.
If sectors of the organized left need to realize the limits of the pact – both the one that led to the election and inauguration and the governing pact –, they need to, in the same way, give rise to the perception that much of what we have experienced since 2013 is the result of our abandonment of the ideological struggle: walking through tactical deviations and historical misunderstanding, we ended up renouncing militancy, the “factory floor” and the organization of the masses.
I note the exception that constitutes the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). We indifferently follow the labor crisis in capitalist production and are surprised by the political crisis of trade unionism. But, above all, the left renounced the education of the masses, the most revolutionary of pedagogies, leaving free space for the advance of conservatism that moves towards proto-fascism, spreading across all social strata.
These questions arise when our present political difficulties are studied. For now, it is good advice to remove from our considerations the Bovarian belief that the electoral victory of last October 30 marks the end of history.
Horror and chicanery
Data Global Wealth Report 2023recently released by the Swiss bank UBS, show Brazil at the top of the ranking of inequality, surpassing giants such as India and the United States, with the richest 1% concentrating no less than 48.4% of the wealth produced in the country.
In Japan, the figure is 18.8%, according to the report. Marcio Pochmann, president of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), completes the information by adding that the so-called CEOs (presidents and directors of companies), here, earn 5 thousand times more than their subordinates, and many of these directors achieve earnings of more than R$1 million per month.
In this context of inequality (which Pochmann describes as “unseemly”), the spokespeople of big capital – the same ones who, decades ago, declared the implementation of the 13th salary sanctioned by Jango to be a “disaster” – are now engaging in terrorism with the prospect if limit interest charges excruciating actions on the part of banking institutions.
In the same scenario, Lula’s economic team sends a bad signal by trying, through a chicane, make the constitutional floors of Health and Education more flexible – this small but valuable civilizational achievement of a nation that takes a long time to be born.
*Roberto Amaral is a journalist, writer, professor and former Minister of Science and Technology.
**With the collaboration of Pedro Amaral.
*** This is an opinion article. The author’s vision does not necessarily express the newspaper’s editorial line Brazil in fact.
Editing: Rodrigo Chagas
