By JOSÉ DIRCEU*

There has never been a criminal and irresponsible government like the current one.

There goes 2020 and nothing has changed. On the contrary, everything got worse. The challenges facing Brazil and our people have become even greater. Tragically, we have no vaccination plan and no way to deal with the worsening pandemic. There has never been a criminal and irresponsible government like the current one, in reality a military, authoritarian, extreme right-wing, obscurantist and fundamentalist government. A corrupt government starting with the president's family and also corrupting by capturing institutions – such as the Federal Police, the Federal Revenue, Coaf, the Public Ministry – and putting them at the service of impunity for the benefit of the president, his family and group of courtiers, police and military now above the law.

The Bolsonaro government went even further by encouraging the population to arm themselves and supporting the militias, by opposing social isolation and free, public universal vaccination. In short, a devastated land where violence and barbarism rage, which include contempt for the environment, for culture and science, for freedom and democracy. We have a government that simply denies the new world that emerges in the crisis, with total alignment with the United States of Donald Trump and hostile to China and the European Union. A government that abandoned Mercosur and South American integration, our natural and necessary geopolitical alliance, solution and exit for national development.

The year that hasn't ended leaves a legacy of stagnation and increased poverty, unemployment and discouragement, precariousness and scrapping of public services. Only austerity – except for the Armed Forces and their officers – privatization, market, speculation. Without growth and with rising unemployment, we still face a scenario of real interest rates for consumers, families and small and medium-sized companies, which, along with the tax structure, expropriates national income and reduces Brazil to a country of underconsumption , with a high concentration of income, wealth and property.

Spending cap, golden rule, wage cuts and spending (except for the military and judiciary elites) are presented as a solution for one of the largest countries in the world that only grew historically when it broke with this orthodoxy and threw itself into the challenges and visionary dreams of its leaders with Getúlio, JK and Lula. Our history teaches us that only with the State and public investment, with income distribution and a national project will it be possible to restore self-esteem, pride, confidence and social cohesion to the country and its people.

We live on the edge of a precipice. Our democracy, national and welfare state are at risk of collapse or rupture, of being captured again by a depraved and decadent dictatorship. It's time to put an end to 2020 and defeat once and for all, before it's too late, the clique that seized power in Brasilia.

There are no more doubts. Bolsonaro and his gang cannot and should not continue to govern Brazil. It is necessary to stop the accelerated march of the government towards national suicide.

We cannot wait for 2022 to defeat this misrule. Our main task, in 2021, is to remove Bolsonaro from the position of president, legally and constitutionally, and to mobilize the country for vaccination and for an emergency plan that avoids a social catastrophe already at our doorstep with the increase in unemployment, poverty, inflation and the end of emergency aid.

Immediately, we must stop all his initiatives in Parliament and resort to the Judiciary to force him to vaccinate the population and respect the Constitution, prevent him from continuing to equip the institutions and from coming to control the board of the two legislative houses. For this, it is necessary to unite all democrats, progressives, nationalists in the fight against Bolsonaro and form, from now on, a left-wing Popular Front to organize popular resistance, fight for public and free vaccination, for emergency aid, for an investment plan to create jobs and income and to contest the presidential elections in 2022.

* Jose Dirceu he was Minister of the Civil House in the first Lula government. Author, among other books, of Memoirs (Editorial generation).

Originally published on the website Power360.