AND: Weekly Editorial – Shift government balances on tight rope
Hereby we publish an unofficial translation of the Weekly Editorial of A Nova Democracia.
For objective reasons, it is necessary to view opinion polls, conducted by certain organizations that pay for them, with some suspicious, including due to certain methods; however, the last three surveys made public that evaluate the performance of the current government, with similar results, allow us to observe trends. The growth of popular rejection to the current government, recorded in the three surveys, has its main motivation in the conduct of the national economy and its consequences in the lives of the popular masses. In the Atlas Intel survey, dated on 7th of March, 40% of respondents disapprove the government, two percentage points above those who approve. As for the economy, 53% believe it is doing badly (an increase of 5% compared to the previous survey, in January); it is the first time in this government that the negative evaluation of the economy exceeds 50%. The Quaest survey, dated on 27th of February, points out that the perception of 73% of those interviewed is that prices have risen – the same topic, in the previous survey, was 48%.
As it turns out, seasonal improvements in the GDP index and “job creation” are just statistics. It is already popular wisdom that a government of the exploiting classes lies in two ways: one is by actually lying, blatantly, the other is by publishing statistics that, by showing everything, hide what is fundamental. The 3% GDP growth is an artificial number led by the record harvest of the agro-export latifundium, which exports of their production, for example, do not contribute to taxes income; they do not bring any improvement to the economic situation of the majority of the population, that is, workers, as is the case with the price of the basic food basket, which became more expensive again in February (in 14 of the 17 capitals, there was an increase in prices). Just in Rio de Janeiro, the increase was an average of 5.1%.
The increase in rejection was, therefore, not the result of a supposed reaction to the country’s president’s speeches abroad condemning the Zionist genocide in Gaza. After all, Luiz Inácio can only condemn the absurdities at the international level, where his words, at best, cause diplomatic discomfort without important repercussions. (The words condemning Israel, by the way, are always preceded by harsh condemnations of the Palestinian National Resistance, echoing the reactionary cry of “Hamas terrorism”). At the national level, Luiz Inácio cannot go on his pose of pretending to be “progressive”, since the economy is handed over to the international financial oligarchy and political governance is handed over to the de facto president, Bolsonaro’s Colonel Arthur Lira, who, additionally to controlling the country’s political agenda (controlling what is or it is not voted on in the National Congress), it also exercises control over the most important part of the Union Budget. It is the government.
Luiz Inácio cannot talk too much about “agribusiness” either, as it would sound strange, even more so after having given him the biggest Harvest Plan in the country’s history, much superior to Bolsonaro’s, while, for the “agrarian reform” of the old State , in 2023 and 2024, the current government allocated a miserable R$2 billion, the same amount that Bolsonaro had allocated in 2021. We all said that Bolsonaro wanted the death of “agrarian reform”; What does Luiz Inácio want, beyond his old story as a tricker in front of the popular masses?
There is also little to say about the fragile institutional base that the country is experiencing due to its own and inevitable decomposition. The president knows that the peak of the military crisis, in 2022 of November, was not just the result of Bolsonarism, but of a doctrine rooted in the mentality of the High Command of the Armed Forces that penetrates practically in all spheres of its structure. This mentality is that, in order to conjure a division and even a simple threat of its existence, the reactionary Armed Forces always play with the minimum democratic freedoms and unify themselves under the reaction, as the medule that they are of this centuries-old system of exploitation and oppression, always in the name of guaranteeing institutional stability and “national salvation”. It means, logically, that the Armed Forces play, from time to time, the role of a political force – which means legitimizing, for all means and purposes, an interventionist force, whether it explicitly uses the method of the classic military coup, or acts through blackmail and threats (which in the end, taken to the ultimate consequences, will also result in a common coup). Luiz Inácio knows this. He knows that so much, that, on 8th of March, the reactionary president said that “the Armed Forces have always interfered in politics”. The observation shows that the president is not ignorant, and not innocent either: his policy of conciliation and appeasement with the coup generals is a conscious attitude typical of the pusillanimous, and this in politics is worse than ignorance or inability. Due to his stance and conduct in the face of the country’s situation, Luiz Inácio is entirely incapable of stopping the coup. He is, at most, postponing it without caring if it breaks down, in the lap of any other next president, really just wanting to rewrite the end of his already dirty biography.
The popular masses, from the countryside and the city, accumulate learnt lessons from this period. To act with dignity, as an independent political force, workers need to free themselves from ideological constraints, according to which they must be content with the minimum. The “minimum”, achieved today through the deceitful appeal of saving the country from the hands of a scoundrel and the support for a government sitting in the lap of the right and conciliation with the hard core of the coup, is condemning them to a future in which the “minimum” will be even worse. This is how the old order continues to deceive the masses, all guaranteed through the well-known blackmail: “things are not good, that’s for sure, but it’s possible, and everything will get even worse if you do not be satisfied with it”. Since ancient times, this has been the most efficient way to keep slaves submissive. It is also a sign confirmed by history that systems like this, no matter what the maneuvers of rulers, will collapse and be swept away!
