(Text sent to friends of the International Council of the World Social Forum, that may interest other people)
It is interesting to note that the feeling of many people outside Brazil, when commenting on Lula’s victory in this election of 2022, is that we were lucky that the ball went in, even though it grazed the post. And in fact the difference in the number of votes for each candidate was 1.66% of the total, the minimum necessary for the ball not to deflect off the bottom of the goal. This was a dramatic difference for those who had been following the vote count and were hoping that the 5.97% difference in the votes received by Lula in the first round would increase or repeat itself. Even more so with the decrease in the number of blank and spoiled ballots, as well as the abstentions, which fell from 20.95% to 20.56%.
We can imagine the shock that the result must have caused to those who lost, seeing victory slip through their fingers minute by minute. And he must have been so sure that he was going to win that he even declared to a journalist immediately after the final debate between the candidates – who in fact he did not even win – that whoever won the election would be sworn in. The probable shock also explains his silence of almost three days after the Superior Electoral Court proclaimed the results and, therefore, his defeat. His first words facing this results court were pompous, with ministers and supporters around him, but very short, after realising he was going to be completely isolated. He did not even mention the winner, greeting him – as is customary in democracies – quickly handing over to one of his ministers the task of announcing that the process of transition, provided for by law, would be initiated. And it is a mystery what ideas must still be running through his sick head, and those of his family and political clan, after he made a second statement asking his supporters, a few days later, to continue protesting, but not to block the roads. But it was significant that this time he appeared on television screens sitting alone near a simple table, wearing a T-shirt, without a jacket, and without advisors or a Libras translator, as he has always done.
When we told friends at the World Social Forum a few days ago that we had not only been dependent on a well-directed kick for a decision on the future of our country (with all the implications that would have for the whole world), they asked us to give more details, because what happened may inspire them in the search for paths for the construction of another possible world. That is what we are doing with this text, which we hope will be completed and corrected by others.
Why Bolsonaro’s probable certainty that he would be victorious? Because it was never seen or even imagined possible in a second round campaign in Brazil (because it would configure an electoral crime punishable with the invalidation of the candidacy) such a gigantic use of public resources and the government machine to buy votes, relying on the misery created by its own economic policy, at the service of big capital. Unfortunately the buying of votes from needy voters – this time made with financial aid, credits and promises handed out by the handful – is an old tradition in Brazil. It is this tradition that makes us postpone indefinitely overcoming the poverty and scandalous income inequality that characterize our country, the heirs of more than 300 years of slavery, which today still persists in new forms.
In fact, the shortages that victimize our people have become necessary, in political practice, for the continuity in power of a large number of greedy and opportunistic professional politicians. They use it to get elected and then completely forget their own promises to work for the improvement of the living conditions of the people. In 1999 a Popular Initiative of Law – a form of social participation in the making of laws, created by the Constitution of 88 – managed to be approved in Congress, as Law 9840/99, making more effective the way to prevent this crime already typified in the Electoral Law. And it had repercussions ten years later, with the law also known as the Ficha Limpa (Clean Record) Law of 2010, which makes ineligible for eight years those who have been convicted by a panel of judges, in the second instance, without needing to wait for the final judgment of convictions – a useful reminder for those who are concerned about preventing Bolsonaro from trying to repeat his crimes by presenting himself as a candidate in 2026. But although Law 9840 has removed from the political stage a large number of profiteers of the type it was aimed at, it has yet to convince all voters that “voting has no price, it has consequences”, as those who engaged in this Initiative repeated. And the unpunished scandal of Bolsonaro’s 2022 campaign shows that even at the level of our institutions there has not been full awareness that for almost thirty years this
they are not fully aware that almost thirty years ago this instrument was placed in the hands of the people, by the more than one million citizens who signed the bill proposal that created it.
The avalanche of electoral crimes of vote buying in the second round certainly determined that the difference between the number of votes between the two candidates decreased instead of increasing, as was the general expectation, from the different wear that Bolsonaro was suffering with actions and statements of his supporters and in the very debates between the candidates. Moreover, this vote buying with public resources was also reinforced with other crimes of great practical effect, never so shamelessly occurred in Brazil but committed this time on a large scale by many different types of employers – public or private, in homes or in companies – aiming to change the voting choice of those who depended on them to work. And on top of this set of illegalities also erupted the threat of violence against supporters of Lula, supported by facilitated access to weapons and ammunition provided by the Executive and Legislative Powers – knowing that the President has long been linked to the illegality of armed groups that impose their law in many peripheral areas of big cities.
The scandal of the use of the machine, in turn, became unbelievably evident on election day itself: the Federal Highway Police, under the direct orders of the Minister of Justice, began to stop on the highways – with the scandalous argument of security, because their tyres were worn out – the buses, municipal, state or private, that were complying with the determination of the Federal Supreme Court to facilitate to the maximum, free of charge, the transportation of voters to their polling places. Note that these “operations” focused especially on the Northeast of the country, poorer than the Southeast, from where it was expected that most of the votes for Lula would come, as they did.
What we now hope is that, in due course, the authors of all these crimes will be punished in an exemplary fashion, so that we may begin, in Brazil, a vigorous process of overcoming impunity, which combines dangerously with the social tendency to trivialize the unacceptable, to become the great Brazilian political wounds. It was these that allowed the serial criminal who took over the presidency in 2018 to stay umpunished there all his painful mandate – and whose actions during the pandemic took on a tragic dimension (by practically partnering with Covid to cause a much higher number of deaths than the disease alone would cause) – as well as the gang of his cronies who assumed posts in the government to contaminate the instruments that the Republic relied on to ensure the proper functioning of democracy in our country.
The result of this set of actions was that the country was politically divided in two. Worse still, two halves separated by the anger of those who were defeated by those who won, because one of the essential characteristics of Bolsonaro’s actions – with the permanent use of lies to influence the most unaware – was exactly that of instilling intolerance and even hatred and – why not? – the murder of opponents.
This explains why today he is able to mobilise a large number of his voters to gather on roads to prevent the free circulation of goods and people and to demonstrate in front of military buildings asking the Armed Forces to prevent Lula’s inauguration. To achieve this Bolsonaro is counting on the funding of that part of the most backward and greedy business class in the country, which has always supported him. Fortunately, this mobilization tends to cool down, thanks to a more decisive action of our Judiciary, which will be able to reach these businessmen, although it could still gain the dimension of violent attacks, given the fact that the number of weapons entered in the country and of shooting clubs tripled during the Bolsonaro government. The part of our population that is thus led has been deceived with the diabolical and corrupt image pasted on the left, aimed at removing from power the Party created by Lula more than twenty years ago. And such deception was associated with remnants of the anti-communist propaganda of the Cold War, which still exists in the heads of many people, especially middle-class people. In addition, Bolsonaro allied himself with a large number of greedy profiteers of popular religiosity, who created large networks, spread throughout the country, with people tamed by a systematic and persistent indoctrination and by the dissemination of lies through electronic social networks – this novelty of interpersonal communication that has been implanted worldwide in recent decades.
But this would be a matter for another text, in due time. To respond to the request of friends from the World Social Forum, it would be useful to tell you how, in our opinion, Brazilian society, despite all of the above, was capable of saying, through the vote, a halt to everything that was happening.
For the other half of society it was becoming increasingly clear, throughout the electoral campaign, in the first and second rounds, and for more and more people, that we could not allow our democracy to collapse entirely, as well as our relationship with nature and with the rest of the world. That was the perspective of life and of the near future that we all envisioned if the neo-fascist experiment we were already living was continued for another four years. The diversity of those who were progressively taking a stand against it was enormous, in different types and areas of work, functions, positions, responsibilities – in state governments, in companies, in class organisations – in ages, levels of education, ideologies, religions, party affiliations, forms of artistic expression, means of communication – from blogs to the big newspapers and TVs, etc., etc. They stood up and publicly declared – and publicised it as much as possible, through the internet and with stickers on their clothes – that they were going to vote for Lula.
We all joined together in this way in a huge “Broad Front”, which in the second round began to grow quickly and intensely, without needing to call itself Broad Front to really exist, nor to get lost in internal disputes about the power attributed to each one or who or which group would lead it. We lived the reign of respect for diversity and free enterprise with common objectives, of the reunion of many who had been separated by political differences, of support from all to all, of mutual help in the autonomy of each social group, of freedom of action without unreasonable competitions in the face of a common enemy that was powerfully destructive and manipulative of the masses – and, no longer afraid of Covid, of embracing ourselves in the streets, which once again began to be occupied by thousands to demonstrate. And a huge amount of big and small acts and initiatives of all kinds were emerging everywhere and all over Brazil, in the social networks and on the internet for Lula’s election and for denouncing Bolsonaro’s crimes, spoken, sung and danced initiatives, at the base of society and wider, bringing people together or speaking one by one, exploding from all sides and at all levels, without hierarchies among them or imposed, negotiated or voted coordinations, nor unifications or artificial uniformities. A true revolution without owner, of struggle for Life with a capital letter to overcome what had only the smell of Death, Lula himself assuming, without any other pretensions, a role of great general animator of a collective construction much wider than himself and his party, as well as his allies who can help it to materialize.
What lesson can we, the WSF, already draw from what happened in Brazil, while the noise of confrontations persists? Would we have the right to dare to say that in Brazil there has been a great political victory of the “open space”, an initial orientation as to the character of the WSF, at its creation in 2001? Affirming itself as a new way of doing politics, which includes joy when it is happening and even more when it reaches a victory, as with the “party” like the one we are having today all over Brazil, at all levels of society? And showing that such a “space” is not inconsequential, but produces concrete actions by encouraging initiatives from various political subjects. Among which those of the people themselves, beneficiaries, along with nature, of the struggles to change the world and, more than just beneficiaries, in fact being the ones who lead the decisive struggles. The well-known writer Celso Rocha de Barros was quoted these days by another well-known writer, Mario Sergio Conti, as saying that in Brazil “the poor saved democracy”.
The victory of the Brazilian people would prove that vertical structures may exist but they are not indispensable, nor should they be the only ones (as they were not in what happened in Brazil, where neither parties nor trade unions issued guidelines or were at the head of initiatives), nor should they occupy all the political space and prevent the emergence and multiplication of autonomous structures and groups, formalised or not, necessarily linked horizontally, for mutual recognition, understanding and mutual help, which strengthens each and everyone, self-organised from the foundations of society, without wearing themselves out in permanent competition with each other, which makes people separate in a deadly individualism of self-realisation – the basic perverse logic with which capitalism feeds its dynamism? Isn’t this what we try to live and learn in the “open spaces” of the World, Regional, National, Local or Thematic Social Forums?
In fact it is in the heat of the joint confrontations for essential causes that we can build the other possible world, as currently – at the world level – *in the struggle for the cause of democracy against fascism, for the environmental cause against the destruction of the planet for the production and unbridled consumerism of material goods, in the cause of solidarity against exclusions and social, gender and minority inequalities, in the cause of the poor, oppressed and original peoples against racial logic, for an economy at the service of human rights and the needs of all against the impersonal and inhuman logic of the accumulation of money and finance*.
Our struggle is a long one, a struggle of many generations. It is a new culture under construction. We will still have to live many episodes like the one Brazil is living now to really advance towards another possible world. Perhaps the World Social Forum still has a great role to play in supporting, training and bringing together those interested in participating in this long revolution.
07/11/2022
Se nos permitem sonhar 
Deixe um comentário