AND Editorial – The government is reaping what it sows

We publish an unofficial translation of the editorial of A Nova Democracia.

There is no doubt that the government’s failures, due to its conciliation policy, are as inevitable as the increase, in his wake, in Arthur Lira’s power, as well as the growth of the Bolsonarist extreme right and the coup frenzy in the barracks.

The president of the current government – theoretically, in practice he is at least shared with the president of the Chamber – is irritated with his ministers due to the negative results in several opinion polls. His approval has been alternating between falling, stagnation and weak upward fluctuations for 6 months. “Haddad has to stop reading a book and negotiate in Congress”, said Luiz Inácio, at an event in the middle of this month. Judging by this, the president of the republic attributes his recent failures to a lack of relations with the “center” and the right in Congress, and in this he is already sowing the next failures.

Luiz Inácio is calculating the following: he needs to avoid even greater drops in popularity among the popular masses and more support among the local dominant classes, as both indicators represent a political weakening of the government – which is always taken advantage of by the opposition and the voracious deputies and senators to extract more funds, amendments and ministries from the government, in exchange only for governability. Furthermore, Luiz Inácio knows well that a government that is too fragile will be easily besieged by crises generated by the same conspirators who were behind the 2022 military crisis and by those thousands of green chickens and their tens of thousands or more of bestialized followers, waiting of the call to raise the mass coup movement, now only dispersed, in the country. To avoid them, the government intends to give to the Congress the same funds, amendments and ministries (which will further strengthen Arthur Lira, the de facto president), but in exchange for approving projects that serve to increase popularity among the masses, without failing, at least, to meet the central interests of the local ruling classes and imperialism, and to balance themselves in the government. In his strategy of poor governance to which he has been forced, this is the magic formula of opportunism.

But the misfortune of this government is that neither he nor anyone else can serve two masters: by approving measures that serve the dominant classes – for example, providing, as he has already done, the biggest Safra plan in history, of which so much is boasted and approving the “tax reform” that continues to indecently exempt agribusiness from paying taxes on grain exports – completely and perversely harms the popular masses and generates frustration with their government. The increase in the cost of the basic food, due to a lack of support and credit for the poor and middle peasantry, is a consequence of his pro-latifundium policy; as well as the failure of the supposed “agrarian reform” on which he is now equivocating, with the misleading proposition of handing over a few thousand hectares of Union land, precisely so as not to touch even a single inch of land from the land thieves of the Union, while more than five million families of poor landless peasants and millions of others with little land demand a piece of land or increase their small property. In the political sphere too, it is not possible to serve two masters: by persisting in appeasing the generals and senior officers of the Armed Forces and adopting “forgetfulness and silence” regarding the 1964 coup, the pusillanimous government makes a mockery of the progressive cause that calls for justice and condemnation so that the coup does not threaten the country – in total negligence and without the slightest coherence with the rhetoric that gained he popularity.

The government is well aware that he serves the ruling classes and is not at odds with the generals, but tries to convey the image that he is progressive and that he serves the rich, but also the poor. To the rich, he offers reforms that increase the exploitation of the poor, the plundering of the country’s natural wealth by imperialism, which allocates public funds to their businesses to the detriment of Health and Education; to the poor, the pose of a worker who has risen in life, the sentimentalist bravado and corporatizing assistance programs (electoral farm) and one or another palliative measure, which does not even compensate for the rise in inflation, unemployment, informality and precariousness in public Health and Education . Problems that have only been growing since before the first PT government and that, now, this 5th PT government is deepening with his right-wing program. In the political sphere, he offers the generals a lot of money and oblivion; and to the families who were victims of the military regime, offers more frustration with the wait for the reopening of the Special Commission on the Dead and Missing of the military regime.

There is no doubt that the government’s failures, due to his conciliation policy, are as inevitable as the increase, in his wake, in Arthur Lira’s power, as well as the growth of the Bolsonarist extreme right and the coup frenzy in the barracks. Popular frustration with the government is not because of a lack of concern for the right, as Luiz Inácio tries to give the impression: popular frustration is because the government is right-wing, as even the unsuspecting Zé Dirceu admitted.

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Abroad, the persistent demonstrations and occupations of North American universities by students in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle and in condemnation of the crimes of Zionism, although they are not new, represent the development of that struggle. Centered in the United States, occupations are beginning to occur in Europe as well, such as the renowned Sciences Po university in Paris.

The slogans and furniture of the occupations are not hegemonized, as in the past, by requests for “peace” in general or by the “condemnation of extremes” (a cowardly way of condemning the rebellious oppressed), but rather by the ceasefire as proposed in the Hamas terms, for the end of illegal Zionist occupations and the condemnation of Zionist war crimes. This is due to the new level that the Palestinian cause itself reached with the brilliant October 7th, the Flood of Al-Aqsa.

The result of the occupations is not trivial. They produce serious consequences, as they are actions that mobilize and politicize North American youth against Zionism’s strategic plans for genocide and occupation of Palestinian lands, harming them, to the extent that, with each new Zionist war crime, the cost and political burden to Yankee imperialism and its current government, and the legitimacy and support for the Palestinian war of national resistance and its most audacious actions and indomitable heroism grow.