Source: Solidnet.org
The legislative-judicial-mediatic coup d’etat in Brazil is going on. On April 17, under authoritarian and farcical driving, the House of Representatives approved the admissibility of impeachment proceedings against the President of the Republic. In the coming days, the Senate welcome the decision, by simple majority, authorize the opening of the procedure and immediately result in expulsion for up to 180 days of President Dilma Rousseff from the post to which she was democratically elected, with 54 million votes.
By José Reinaldo Carvalho (*).
In few months, the Senate will took the predicable final decision, converted to the Court, under the Presidency of the Supreme Court. The traced and executed script in both congressional houses showed so far that there is a game of marked cards and the exercise of a relentless power of the majority made up of reactionary parties. There are not worth logic, rationality or the truth of the facts. It is an abominable counterfeit trial, led by disgusting politicians. A ritual used to give a false constitutionality to something that is already decided. . A judgment made as an expression of a coup, which does not take into account consistent legal criteria.
In recent days, another throw into unbelievable coup plot, aimed at medium-term future: the request of the Attorney General to the Supreme Court to investigate President Dilma Rousseff and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for "obstruction operation Lava Jato[1]". Invested of Torquemada powers, the attorney general has denounced Lula as "head of a criminal organization" in the operation of the so-called "petrolão[2]".
The coup in motion is not circumstantial, the result of some random fact or operation of weaknesses and possible government tactical errors and progressive parties. To think so would be the same of believe that the first electoral defeat of Lula, in the distant 1989, to the TV edition of the infamous debate with the candidate who would become victorious, Fernando Collor. Moreover, consider that the inauguration of neoliberal-conservative cycle from Fernando Henrique Cardoso's election in 1994 would have been the result of judicious and a skill advertising operation of the "victorious launch" of the Real Plan. It would also be naive to suppose that the impeachment process is a personal reaction of the President of the House of Representatives to the vote of PT deputies in the Ethics Committee in favour of his impeachment.
Casual events have their weight, but we can understand them just in a general context and objective, the development and outcome of political and social contradictions.
Brazilian ruling classes are hostile to democracy, social progress, the sharing of property or income, justice, social advancement of workers and popular masses. They do not accept reforms or political and social changes that put in check their privileges.
We can say the same about the geopolitical position of the Brazilian bourgeoisie. It alternates the neo-colonial subordination to the imperialist powers with a great power complex associated with these same international potentates, both attitudes contrary to a progressive alignment on the international concert and performance of a role proactive for peace, democratization of international relations and the sovereign integration of Latin America. It is clear and consolidated phenomenon that the Brazilian ruling class is also unpatriotic, strategic reserve of world hegemony plans of the imperialist powers. Their own interests are not national and are malleable to the imperial strategies.
It was ever thus, since its constitution as a class in the 18 and 19th centuries, the time of colonial slavery, a trace transmitted by inheritance to the capitalist landowners and the current monopolist and financial bourgeoisie. In addition, it will so, until there is a political and social revolution in the country, to build a new power under the leadership of the working class and its political representatives.
While they supposed that Lula's election in 2002 opened only a small gap in the political development of the country and they showed a cynical satisfaction in fining the commitments and moderation in vogue as a political phenomenon that they could live whit for a short term, these classes remained in their observation post or in a discrete readiness
Strictly speaking, it lasted two years, because the scandal of the "“mensalão[3]” (2005) and all its legal and political outspreads, were the milestone of the coup that are consumed now.
The coup in motion reveals a great convergence of neoliberal and conservative forces. Political parties of wide spectrum of parties, except that from the left, in collusion with sectors of the Public Ministry, the Supreme Court and the Federal Police, to consummate the coup, inflict a stinging defeat to the progressive and left forces that in the past 13 years ruled the country under the leadership of the Workers Party (PT).
Neoliberals and conservatives formed during the last 13 years a kind of oppositional condominium, which took its most complete form in the second round of the last presidential election and the current coup offensive, whose genesis came from elections and earlier clashes.
Nothing more explicit about the nature of the alliance coup and the political and ideological essence of the forces that are part of that full programmatic convergence. The "bridge to the future" Michel Temer and platform "principles and values", which was delivered to him on Tuesday (3) by Senator Aécio Neves, the PSDB[4], are faces of the same coin.
In its essential aspects, there is also convergence with generic formulations of former Mayor of São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab, a reactionary stubborn, who never came off the conservative tenets of his original party, the old PFL[5] current DEM[6].
Among the forces that always acted in the centre-left, there were also those who prepare imitations of democratic programs, with marked opposing to the left and the government of president Dilma. Foremost among these the PSB, now under the control of a group that now has nothing to do, except for honourable individual exceptions, with the Party of Jamil Haddad and Miguel Arraes.
When the neoliberal platforms of the PPS[7] and Solidarity Parties are put together to those ones, we can observe that programmatically all coup forces are combined as the antidemocratic, anti-popular and anti-labour nature. They national betrayal forces of an eventual post-coup government.
The contradictions, which are not few, refers themselves exclusively to lower physiological interests, aiming to take immediate advantage and electoral clash 2018.
There is a common denominator: the coup forces have an anti-reform political agenda by which they will promote the anti-democratic regression of the Brazilian state. We will have the end of social achievements; total openness to international financial capital; the return of privatizations; submission to the dictates of monopoly capital, that they are committed to promote the repeal of laws that now ensure the social and labor rights. There will also a civilizational setback, assuming the dictates of the canons of retrogressive Pentecostal churches, promoting attacks on achievements in the field of social coexistence, civil rights and human rights.
It makes all sense that the coup that promotes the overthrow of president Dilma Rousseff’s government gains the consensus of the whole monopoly-financial bourgeoisie, the big industry and big merchants, landowners, the media, the upper-middle class and everything that has the stench, the grotesque and idiotic essence of the Brazilian bourgeoisie. It is noteworthy that all employers' organizations, among which stood out the notorious Fiesp[8], the shrill, cartoonish rightist Paulo Skaff[9], have published formal and solemn declarations in favour of the coup
The coup in motion demonstrates the entire failure of the Brazilian political system, the ultimate break with the constitutional democratic order established by the Constitution 1987-1988.
Regardless of the outcome of ritual of impeachment in the Senate, the political struggle enters in a new stage and rises to highest level. Without prejudice to the electoral struggle and institutional action in parliaments and local and state governments, the political struggle of the masses, the grassroots organization, the strengthening of popular and unionist organizations went to the primordial place.
In addition - a priority issue - the building of unity of left and progressive forces enters at order of the day, the Popular Brazil Front is a germ, with a broad perspective to unite all susceptible forces in the defense of democracy, social progress and national sovereignty. With a program of resistance and struggle that show immediate tasks of medium and long term, the scope of which is the holding of democratic structural reforms and progressive.
The commitment of the left forces to fulfil this task is greater as deeper could be the understanding of why the support base of the government has collapsed. It will be need to uplift a new political pact, a progressive front, and accumulate forces to ensure the hegemony of the popular-democratic and anti-imperialist camp. From the angle of analysis and the interests of these forces, it is necessary to formulate a strategy and a tactic to avoid any kind of adaptation to the neoliberal and conservative order.
Mutations observed in the PMDB[10] behaviour and other central forces, and their desertion of a democratic and patriotic project, were not abrupt. They have occurred over a political process in which they were ceasing to be progressive parties. In the case of the PMDB, it is something that is set from the failure of the government Sarney and the presidential candidacy of Ulysses Guimarães, in 1989. The recent events finally demonstrate that this party, under the direction of Michel Temer, had no credentials to play a role as the main guarantor of the government coalition in parliament, much less to occupy the strategic post of vice-president of Republic.
With clear objectives, programmatic beliefs, strategic thinking and a sense of the historical moment, the left sees the current crisis and the new unfavourable conditions as a step of struggle. The clarity with which it shows the division between the antagonistic camps of political struggle, does not annul, on the contrary reinforces, the need to combine firmness and combativeness with spaciousness and flexibility tactics, without illusions or confusion related to the character and the strategic objectives of various political subjects.
The criminalization of the left, the ferocity with they seek to outlaw the PT and exclude other sectors of institutional life, making the former president Lula ineligible, and submit it, as President Dilma, to the legal penalties, including deprivation of liberty, indicate the level of attack on progressive forces. This also gives us an indication of the dimensions of the new challenges.
The fight against the coup aroused immense democratic consciousness and the ability to fight of millions of Brazilians who aspire to democracy, social justice and national sovereignty, human rights, good governance, cultured life and high civilizational standards. It had been the same in the decisive clashes of the second round of the presidential election in 2014.
There is an accumulated energy, which will develop on its own dynamics, in order to become into driving force behind the realization of urgent transformations, of revolutionary sense, which the Brazilian society is asking for.
(*) Journalist, editor Resistance [www.resistencia.cc], a member of the National Secretariat, the Politburo and the Central Committee of the PCdoB
[1] Operation Lava Jet is the biggest corruption investigation conducted so far in Brazil. It began investigating a network of money exchangers who were active in several States and found the existence of a vast corruption scheme at Petrobras (Brazilian Oil Company), involving politicians from various parties and the largest contractors in the country. (N.T.)
[2] A slang form to Lava Jato, it means ‘ a big oil’.
[3] Mensalão is the name given to the political corruption scandal in that the government was accused of buying votes in the Parliament, which took place between 2005 and 2006. (N.T.)
[4] PSDB- Social Democracy Party of Brazil (N.T.)
[5] PFL – Liberal Front Party (N.T.)
[6] DEM – Democrats (N.T.)
[7] PPS – Socialist Popular Party (N.T.)
[8] Fiesp- Federation of Industries of the São Paulo State (N.T)
[10]PMDB – Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (N.T.)
