AND Editorial – Facing the opportunist failure, raise the people’s protests!
We share an unofficial translation of the latest Editorial by A Nova Democracia.
The 11 percentage point drop in approval of the right-wing and false left coalition government, recorded by the Datafolha Institute on February 14, marks a leap with serious consequences in the latent political crisis. The reason for the sharp drop – and politically very worrying for opportunism – is none other than: frustration and hopelessness. It was driven precisely by the most impoverished sectors: those who earn up to two minimum wages or who have been to elementary school (15 percentage points drop in approval); by women (drop of 8 points); in the Northeast region (drop of 16 points!). In short, millions of workers who do not believe in the political system, who claim precisely that the government, presented as left-wing, is not.
Governing with and for the big landlord right, the previous step to Bolsonarism and fascism, the result could not be otherwise: the outbreak of the government’s legitimacy crisis was as inevitable as the sunrise and, from it, all the favorable conditions for the resuscitation of the far right germinate. The false left is the best electoral asset of the fascists.
Such a situation was already glimpsed even within the government: an allegedly “radical” sector of the PT, more linked to the political program of the bureaucratic fraction of the big bourgeoisie, is already pressing for a “turn to the left”, that is, the same political program as always: public debt, infrastructure works to reactivate extensive employment in relations of extreme exploitation and welfare programs for the corporatization of the impoverished masses, electorally palatable. If the “centrão” allowed it (because it is who governs the country today), such a proposition could not go against the popular discontent (namely, such a “turn” is nothing more than the poorly finished copy – because the creation of state-owned companies would be missing – of the economic program of the dictator of the time General Geisel in the middle of the military regime). The so-called “economic team” of the government, a group more linked to the comprador fraction, calls for “caution”, as if it were possible to reverse the government’s crisis by applying the “spending ceiling” of the international financial oligarchy that not even Bolsonaro respected.
The division is not only between the opportunist bands of the PT: it is between opportunism and the open right that has incorporated itself into the government. For example, José Múcio, in an interview days after the survey, opened his big mouth and said, clearly: amnesty (to the far right, of course) is common in history, it is a priority and a condition for the pacification of the country. It is well known, this is exactly the position of the coup generals and colonels of the reactionary Armed Forces and their hitmen of the lower ranks, who, seeing a change of winds in national politics, Múcio used to ventilate, from within the government. This agenda – indispensable for a certain “anti-communist mass movement”, shy since January 8, 2023, to revive itself and, with it, to reestablish the conditions for the High Command to retake the initiative of its counterrevolutionary offensive and to blackmail the country again with a military coup to impose its “Project of the Nation” subjugated to the Yankee imperialism.
For his part, although the leaders of the parliamentary right have rejected the idea of “disembarking” from the government, Luiz Inácio himself recognizes that the ministerial reform will be necessary to give even more control of key government posts to the big landlord right, so that it does not destabilize the government in Congress. At the same time, in Congress, “political reform” projects are advancing, such as the establishment of semi-presidentialism, the end of reelection, modifications to the Clean Record Law and others, to completely close the siege against the government. All this will mean, in short, an even more right-wing government, in content, form and appearance – it will not be able to give any other result than the deepening of the same crisis of legitimacy, and moreover, further prepare the ground for the far right.
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The genocidal Bolsonaro, who was already mobilizing protests for mid-March, refuses to transform the pro-amnesty demonstrations into pro-impeachment protests: this would be the same as defending a way out to ease the crisis without including or taking advantage of it. It is better for him to keep bleeding Luiz Inácio for the next two years and take advantage of this to – who knows – advance the agenda for an amnesty or reestablishment of his legibility for 2026.
He is aware that this is the best scenario for his plans, because very unfavorable conditions are opening up for the government of opportunism, either because of his low popularity, or because of the strong political siege imposed on him by the landowning right in Congress.
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The deep crisis of domination of the old order, expressed in the demoralization of the government, is not limited to this: it is a deep demoralization of the entire political and power system (the old genocidal State), a deep and comprehensive crisis, which since the Days of 2013-14 has not re-established any popular legitimacy. The AtlasIntel survey, prepared between February 11 and 13, shows it: 82% do not trust the National Congress; 50% do not trust the government; 47% do not trust the STF; 72% do not trust the Armed Forces. If you take the Datafolha survey, in which only 24% approve of the current government, you can see how far the general crisis in the country has come, when all the forces and institutions, which oppose each other in their struggles for power, receive similar distrust and general rejection from the masses, who see them as more of the same. “Democratic institutions suffer a deep crisis of popular representation in Brazil”, is the conclusion of the director of AtlasIntel, Yuri Sanches.
There is no other reason for the deep and very serious general crisis of the decomposition of the old State: those at the bottom do not accept to live as before, and for a long time, those at the top cannot continue to govern as they have for a long time. The popular hope for the full realization of democratic freedoms and rights – a hope that surpasses centuries of the struggle of the popular masses, always captured by reactionary, opportunistic or traitorous forces that have sold or corrupted them, and crushed by genocides committed by these reactionary Armed Forces – is converted, day by day, into indifference, resentment, a feeling of impotence; when they are scourged by those same Powers which do not feel they represent them, the masses rush forth with unrestrained hatred, pooled rancor, fury, desire for revenge, and for the utterly destruction of the whole old order and its institutions of lustrous facades, whitewashed sepulchers. The old democracy today reaps all the popular anger and rejection because it has done nothing more than deceive the people once again. The rise of coup d’état is a reflection of the failure of the old democracy, even more so with its “social-democratic” management of the false opportunist left and its rogue leader of the labor aristocracy, in particular. The revolutionary potential submerged among the masses in the midst of this crisis, what a surprise, is eroding all apparent stability. Such a potentially revolutionary sentiment can now be deflected by the far right, fascists or the coup plotters (as it had been by the electoral left before): To prevent it, the true left, the revolutionaries, the leaders and the people’s combative classist activists must boldly mobilize the popular masses, on each front of struggle, linking their economic interests and revindications to the political banners of relentless combat against the far right of criminals and butchers who dream of re-establishing the reign of terror of the military regime, as well, against the old decrepit democracy with its lackeys (opportunists) who take away the rights of the people and offer them hell on earth. To call on them – the masses – to defend a right-wing government, arguing to them that this is necessary to prevent the far right from returning to rule, is as irrational as it is criminal: for it is to confuse them, to disorient them, to demobilize them, to destroy their most elementary forms of organization – and, in this state, the popular masses become easily captured by fascism. Rather, the mobilization of the masses, in order to conquer their economic and political rights, must be linked to the defense of a new democracy, that of the democratic, agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution!
