Brazil: Editorial – Luiz Inácio Felt the Blow

We publish an unofficial translation of an Editorial by A Nova Democracia.

“Today we have the worst Congress in the history of our republic. An egocentric and partial judiciary. A weakened, cornered government – we know the reason Mr. President – that makes alliances and agreements to stay in power”. This is what Yakui Tupinamba, leader of the that people, said in an official solemn event on September 12. Coming from a legitimate indigenous representative, this honest critic cannot be blunter. During this speech, the television recorded the “faces and expressions” of Luiz Inácio and Janja, the first lady, as a furious reaction to the truth said in front of them, as if these words were insolent words coming from ingrate people. A pathetic scene, a furious Luiz Inácio takes the microphone, he reproached the Tupinambá leader, with the clear intention to intimidate her, and nearly shouting, he suggested her to “change the speech”. He tried to justify himself with such an impolite insinuation that the indigenous leader does not have “political intelligence”, he tried to justify his policy of everything to the “agrobusiness” and nothing to the indigenous, peasants and Quilombolas who do not understand “that the government is in minority” in the legislative chambers. Incredible!

While he tried to look like a political know-it-all, for whom intelligence means cunning and disguise, Luiz Inácio acted like a fool. If his miserable justification of “parliament minority” was true, then it is just that we ask ourselves: Why did we not lived in the petit bourgeois “socialist paradise” between 2005 and 2013 that was so promised in the PT party programs and withing the babbles of concrete opportunist people? In the end, in that period with as false agreements as today, the PT and its presidents governed alone, with the majority in both legislative chambers. No, it is not due to lack of “parliamentarian majority” and the never possible “force correlation” that forces the opportunist government to be, in practice, a rightist government: the government is rightist because in fact its leaders believe that any radical social change is impossible, so it is better to bend in front of the ruling classes, win its approval to administrate the old order of exploitation and oppression on the people with a banal promise of doing it less brutal than the traditional and extreme right – and objectively this only worsens the slavery of the poor masses by making them believe in their politics and, even worst, to frustrate them and pave the way for extreme reaction. So, Yakui was right.

But look, to show that Luiz Inácio is not so indifferent to the peasant demands, the government recently announced the expropriation of 174.8 thousand hectares of land for the “agrarian reform”. In the official site of the government it is written that “the objective is to advance in the agrarian regularization”. Yes, to promote the regularization of the agrarian structure…. With miserly 174.8 thousand hectares. We say it is a joke, to avoid saying blatant cynicism. To show how ridiculous it is, the reactionary “neo-liberal” FHC [Translator’s note: Fernando Henrique Cardoso] – as he likes to be called –, in 1998, after three years of government, expropriated 4.9 millions of hectares, what was already a bad joke. Luiz Inácio, in two years of his third government, reaches 3,5% of what FHC already did in his first mandate.

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It is known that fires already direct or indirectly affect more than 60% of the national territory. This is done by the Bolsonarist latifundium because of the economical reasons and because the voracity on the agricultural front areas, environment preservation and demarcation areas of Indigenous Lands. Also, the lack of action of the government is notorious. But only this does not explain such phenomena. There are big fire focus in regions where, economically, there is no immediate benefit for the latifundium – in São Paulo, for example –. Also, the degree of coordination of this actions in this regions is notorious – that remember us to the Bolsonarist actions in November-December, 2022, it was corroborated that they had an operational militarized nucleus with the direct action of the special operation service of the Armed Fores, with the objective to politically wear down the government. It is shown that the anti-communist movement with a significative base among the masses, politically headed by Bolsonaro and the operations done by the militarized organization nucleus, is not dead: it continues alive, with the same wideness and only waiting for better conditions – and, in fact, acting to build them – to come back to the complete offensive.

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The elections to the São Paulo’s council turned into a window, showing the demoralization of the electoral process. First, because the dynamic of the vote intention are in favor of the candidates that breaks the most with the electoral process; the masses have identity, not as the rotten system of the old democracy and its electoral farce, but with those who despise it – because the masses feel despised by this system; the masses like those who despises the horrendous play of disguise and dream-selling because they will also like to despise it at the same level as they feel despised by the system. Of course intentionally the extreme right is looking to take advantage and present itself as “anti-system” to manipulate the conscious of the masses to extreme radicalization – and, being the only political force of the official political world that undermine the old democracy, while the false left defends its misery by tooth and nail, it ends up attracting part of the masses, in dispute with the revolutionary movement. However, when Datena decided to throw a chair to Pablo “Muzzle” he turned the dynamic against him: among the public opinion, no one said it was absurd, in the end, which average worker do not wish to throw a chair to any reactionary politician? Anyways, no one doubts that now the Paulist elections have a strong counter-flow which has more people’s sympathy than any candidate: a chair.

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It is urgent to the people’s and democratic movement to raise high the flag of boycott to the electoral farce as the tool of the campaign to unmask the old bourgeois society – class dictatorship over people’s masses –, and against this old order of disguise and oppression to the Agrarian Revolution, as first stage of the Revolution of New Democracy. The masses in the countryside are doing new land seizures carried out by armed self-defense groups; among the cities the disappointment with the class conciliation path increases among the politically active masses. The always valid word, which in electoral season must take the center of the political democratic-revolutionary action, is: “Elections no, revolution yes!”