AND: Editorial – Essays of the new and major political crisis
We publish an unofficial translation of the editorial of A Nova Democracia.
Regardless of the consequences of the accusation, the bomb is falling on the government, already weakened by the unchanged state of general increase in the cost of living for the masses of workers and small owners and by the cowardly attitude towards the strike of teachers and administrative technicians of the Federal higher public Education
Indicted by the PF for corruption, money laundering and criminal organization, Juscelino Filho, Luiz Inácio’s Minister of Communications, calls for the presumption of innocence. The legal process, certainly, must grant it: but it is too much to ask that the simple Brazilian worker to grant it, as the permanent experience is that a bourgeois politician accused of corruption can only be a criminal, even if it is proven otherwise. No one can blame the masses for seeing it this way. What’s more: the crimes would have occurred with federal funds allocated to Codevasf, which has been the paradise of the Bolsonarist “center”, honored by the current government.
In this sense, regardless of the consequences of the accusation, the bomb is falling on the government, already weakened by the unchanged state of general increase in the cost of living for the masses of workers and small owners and by the cowardly attitude towards the strike of teachers and administrative technicians of the Federal higher public Education. We can never forget that Bolsonarism grows as the false left becomes demoralized: so, once again, Bolsonarism is grateful.
While the rats are celebrating with federal funds from within the government, Luiz Inácio was at the Conference of the International Labor Organization to preach about the importance of giving value to workers – except the federal Education strikers, as these, it is assumed, do not deserves some value to the government. He spoke, nodding to the left, and criticized global governance, inequality between “rich and poor countries” and everything else. He was applauded, of course, also by representatives of the powers he criticized, as if they enjoyed the juggling show. In Brazil, things are different.
The government is still under pressure, on the one hand, by the international financial oligarchy, which demands compliance with the new “spending ceiling” (fiscal framework) and, on the other, by sectors of the ruling classes who live off tax exemptions or low taxes. The government tried to increase revenue by taxing some local monopoly sectors, and it caused a huge outcry. It made a step back. As it cannot frustrate either of them, the government focuses on social spendings. This is the backdrop to the government’s contempt for the federal Education strike. And the fiscal austerity regime is just beginning: “[The spending cut agenda…] is gaining traction over time, increasingly”, said Fernando Haddad (or was it Paulo Guedes?). Until now, this agenda has only been against the social spendings.
This rise in the political temperature now is not accidental. The traditional right, which in 2022 joined the PT boat to get rid of yet another far-right government, did so by circumstantial and convenient calculation: in 2026, it intends to get rid of Luiz Inácio, and with Bolsonaro’s ineligibility and the construction of a “moderate” Bolsonarism, creates the ideal scenario to remove PT opportunism from the government and, at the same time, neutralize right-wing extremism by channeling it towards Tarcísio de Freitas. With the opportunist social-democratic policy, even more so without reforms, having promised the opposite, the current government only pave the way and prepare the return of Bolsonarism, even if headed by a “moderate”. The popular, demanding movement must raise the popular protest high, and take advantage of the moment of political unrest that is emerging to “pull the rope” in its favor, unmask opportunist social democracy as a bourgeois policy to deceive workers and accumulate forces to build the revolutionary path.
