By LUIZ WERNECK VIANNA*
The search for a broad front aims to ensure a system of protection for the electoral calendar and the articulation of social and political forces that lead to an indisputable victory.
It is still too early to celebrate the recent opinion polls that signal that the electoral path is closed for the reproduction of the maligned government that is there. The supernatural of Almeida do Nelson Rodrigues, as seen in the last elections, frequents environments other than football stadiums. Aside from the terrible hypothesis, it seems like beans told by the carriage platform that next year's polls will seal the end of yet another authoritarian experience in our republican history. It is evident that this reading, supported by the strength of the facts that confirm it, is of general scope, and as such is not unique to democratic currents, certainly shared by the leaders of the Bolsonarist regime who demonstrate at every step their rejection of the norms and institutions of democracy .
The last two cards that Bolsonaro had – his association with Centrão and the so-called Auxílio Brasil –, whose electoral effects are still not being felt, have already been played. Moreover, if what you expect from these two letters is frustrated – the Centrão is, as is known, fickle –, your pretensions, as current polls indicate, risk being removed even in the first electoral round. For Bolsonaro, the electoral path is a stony path, and, aware of this, he has already tried, as on the unfortunate 7th of September, to cut it short with an unsuccessful sleight of hand. The horizon that unfolds in front of him, in his Donald Trump-style logic, is to stir up turmoil, as he signals in his policy of seeking confrontations at any pretext, even in childhood vaccination. Due to the lack of an alternative, they plot in favor of a recurrence of September 7th.
The current scene of Brazilian politics is far from looking like a blue sky, as the usual unwary are already quick to assess. There are large interests at stake that benefit from the policies of a predatory Victorian capitalism, and a multitude of small mafia interests, urban and in the border regions, that feel threatened by the advance in the field of opinion by the democratic forces. The reconquest of a democratic government will not be carried out smoothly and without risk, and its possibility depends on the widest possible articulation of the political forces present. There is no third way, but a single royal road that paves the way for the emergence of the great majorities and their social movements on the scene that will stop the latent fascism that since the 1930s has haunted our history as in the Estado Novo, in the AI regime -5 and now at the present hour.
The construction of this wide road calls for major engineering, specialized in calculating bridges in high-risk terrain and that resist the ever-present shocks when human action challenges fate in its creations, which, in this case, applies to emancipating our society of flaws that we inherited from our disastrous history of formation made in the shadow of plantations slaveholders. It's not an easy task, and others before us have succumbed despite the huge efforts they've dedicated. It is not the work, given the scope and complexity of which it is covered, of one or a few, but of many, of all those who understand that our society is at risk of degradation and it is urgent that we move to save it.
In this sense, the signals issued by relevant political personalities, such as Lula and Alkmin, antagonists in several electoral disputes, that they are looking for a path of convergence, an attempt to reissue the Portuguese contraption in our plagues, according to some analysts, are welcome. For the time being, this promising essay depends for its implementation on successful negotiations to be carried out by the expertise of the politicians involved in this difficult operation, who must not lack the support of democratic opinion and of the parties and social movements that come to support it. in order to convert it into an exemplary experiment of pedagogical action in the fragmented policy that we practice.
On two occasions, in the 1988 elections and in this last one in 2018, we succumbed to the egocentric impulses of parties and personalities that led to the dispersion of democratic forces with the disastrous result of the electoral triumphs of Collor and Bolsonaro, the seriousness of what is at stake in the The forthcoming presidential succession imperatively demands that such mistakes not be repeated. The channels opened between Lula and Alkimin, although significant, are still too narrow to give safe passage to the repressed demands of the great majorities. Extending it is everyone's task, it's time for big politics in the face of the challenge of the threat of fascitization of social life and the State.
The search for a broad front aims, from now on, to ensure a system of protection for the electoral calendar and the articulation of social and political forces that lead to an undisputed victory at the polls as a strong signal that we have finally broken with the long history of political authoritarianism that leaves in its wake the monstrous social inequality that prevails among us.
In terms of ideas, it could certainly be hoped that at the head of the democratic coalition that now presents itself, other names could be present, but the ones we have are these, and, at this time, what matters is to find cats that eat mice, to what we are well served.
*Luiz Werneck Vianna is a professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Author, among other books, of The passive revolution. Iberism and Americanism in Brazil (Revan).
Originally published on the portal IHU-online.
