By LUIZ MARQUES*
The rulers of the neoliberalism manual treat assets built over several generations as if the jewels were their own, without proposing plebiscites to listen to the popular will
In the country, privatizations condense the anthropophagic method for the accumulation of wealth by a few. An extensive bibliography on the 1990s, especially under the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, addresses the shady deals that covered fraud: Privatized Brazil: an assessment of the State, by Aloysio Biondi; the toucan privacy, by Amaury Ribeiro Jr.; The prince of privataria, by Palmério Dória. The pretext for transferring surplus companies to the private sector was to reduce the public sector's net debt, which proved to be a fallacy. Between 1994 and 2002, public debt jumped from 32% to 56% of national GDP. To the fake news are not new.
The rulers of the neoliberalism manual treat assets built over several generations as if the jewels were theirs, without proposing plebiscites to assess the popular will. To privatize, they first belittle democracy. The representation they receive at the polls is converted into delegation to do whatever they want in power, as a rule, without prior notice in electoral campaigns. The result is increased inequalities, unemployment, poverty, hunger and much worse services.
Privatizations coincide with the application of “austerity” in the economy, we read in The social costs of neoliberal adjustment in Latin America, by economist Laura Tavares Soares. The liquidation of public assets goes hand in hand with the precarious existence of the working classes. The people become poorer at the speed with which the country denationalizes. The march of dystopia is greeted with praise for “modernization” and “globalization”, to free up borders for consumption and capital. Hollywood cinema captures the collective fear of a phenomenon that occurs in both hemispheres, to a greater or lesser extent. Neo-Pentecostalism offers a shoulder to individual helplessness.
To remember the village of Rio Grande do Sul, and perhaps universalize the experience of what leaders committed to the common good should not do, the alliance of PSDB / Eduardo Leite and MDB privatized CEEE and CORSAN, essential electricity and water . The emedebista slogan about the “gaúcha soul”, used to highlight gauchidade, is a demagogic attempt to naturalize a political-ideological-classist positioning, as if it emerged from the aesthetics of a dance at the CTG.
The pantomime repeats itself. The head of the Brazilian Integralist Movement, the fascist outburst that spread throughout the 1930s, Plínio Salgado, used the same subjective key to signify Brazilianness – “the backlands are a mentality, a state of mind”. Bolsonarism, ditto, beckons with a banshee, that of the patriot who does not look up, concealing support for the financialization of the State and the monoculture of neocolonial export-type agribusiness. These are deception techniques.
In the political division of surrender, the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo and vice Ricardo Gomes, member of the Institute of Business Studies (IEE), transfer land and parks with trees cut down to build the ferris wheel and parking. Furthermore, they privatize the Carris jewel. Mayor José Fogaça, back there, set the stage by removing control of ticketing, advance sales and the social fare compensation fund from EPTC, abdicating the role of public authorities.
There are 121 installments over 10 years, paid with resources from the company itself, once a management model. The municipality loses the fundamental reference to transport policy, and guarantees payments lower than 10% of what current monopoly lines usually account for, denounced former mayor Raul Pont, in “The scandal of Cia. Carris, or how to create capitalists without capital ” (On the 21, 16/10/2023).
The green-yellow unreason is deepening in the South. It is not the public interest that measures ongoing commercial transactions; It is the foolish idea that private management would be more efficient than public management. The subject of buying books, chromebooks and unused teaching kits in the Porto Alegre school system is not a case of incompetence, but an irregularity. The internal investigation concluded without designating those who owe explanations for the negligence. Private profit, not the well-being of the population, drives the privatism of strategic companies, without which society is at the mercy of the market. The city is put up for sale by the (extreme) right. The corporate media sucks. Explain: he is neoliberal and, equally, he supports the panacea of chloroquine and ivermectin on the market.
Soon there will be a bibliography about each selling event in the temple, also in Querência Amada. The behavior of each institution that was linked to the privatization process will soon be the subject of serious investigative reports, course completion works at universities, master's dissertations and doctoral theses. No public figure who engages in such controversial and contested business escapes public judgment sooner or later.
War is the continuation of privatization by other means, to paraphrase Clausewitz. Meanwhile, the bombing in the Middle East does not stop. The hospital hit by bombs in the Gaza Strip – with an estimated 500 fatalities – contributes to the regionalization of the conflict. The Israeli government spokesperson posts a message on the internet mea culpa which was subsequently erased, but left the fingerprints of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In Jordan, a crowd of protesters sets fire to the headquarters of the Israeli Embassy in response to the massacre. Indignation grows. The terrorist act committed by Hamas leads a State to reproduce irrationalism. Protests spread across Europe.
The authority of the UN as a global governance body, greatly eroded by Donald Trump and his puppet Barra (heavy) Tijuca, needs to be restored and strengthened. It is the opportunity to reestablish, in parallel, the massive character of the World Social Forum (WSF) with course corrections to make it more organizational in civilization's struggles against barbarism. The pandemic was unable to humanize the theater owners, who continue on the march of dystopia. The news hurts in the stomach. This article ends in the line denouncing the madness, with the melancholy sigh of the poet Cecília Meireles: “Longing for hopes / When the world ends”.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was the state secretary of culture in Rio Grande do Sul during the Olívio Dutra government..
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