By LUIZ WERNECK VIANNA*
The democratic field managed to install politics and its institutions as a place for resolving political conflicts
The long night of nightmare that afflicted us for so long, exposed to the threat of the resurgence of fascism, a political pathology preserved in a latent state from the Estado Novo of 1937 – this one, clearly fascist – also manifested in the AI-5 regime and revived by the appropriation of the State by a stroke of fortune by an adventurer who set himself the mission of bringing this unfortunate experience back to life, finds its end in these days that herald spring.
Society is still barely waking up from these moments of bitterness that it experienced helplessly, in the midst of a cruel pandemic, due to the criminal omission of a government that consciously, through clumsy political calculations, ignored the seriousness of the situation and left us the macabre legacy of almost 700 dead. .
Certainly, the outcome of the political tragedy that befell us still hovers in the realm of unpredictability, and powerful resistance is already standing in the way of democratic aspirations that animate ever larger sectors of social life, especially among young people, women and those who come from the world. of work, particularly those affected directly in their rights and in the lowering of their living conditions. The patriarchy with which we were born as a society is mortally wounded, and the efforts of the current government to ensure its continuity, one of the pieces of the authoritarian arsenal, have always been irrelevant.
In fact, there is still a long way to go, whether short or long, it is impossible to anticipate, so that the fullness of the democratic order can be established, but the fact remains that the fascist outbreak that came to us from the actions and projects of the government has already been quelled by the action of the public opinion and the vigorous resistance of institutions, in particular our high courts of justice, which ensured the preservation of the electoral calendar.
Removed from the immediate horizon of politics, the machinations of the coup that aimed to establish unbridled power for Bolsonaro as head of the nation, are oriented, in a defensive movement, towards a composition with the traditional right in order to seek an alternative through elections. of survival. In this sense, it now has the forces grouped in the Centrão, traditional bastions of privileges originating in our formation of a society created from the great slave holdings.
Such displacement of the conspiratorial plan, the main focus of its efforts in its early years, to the electoral terrain, implied a sudden change of course in unknown terrain, as can be seen in the cornucopia that it installed, on the eve of the elections, with the aim of collecting the votes. of the low-income population.
In this field, the Bolsonarist hosts will count as strategists the traditional politicians specialized in controlling the backward populations of our country. hinterland and of military, jejunos in mass electoral contests. It is true that in a holster within reach, as on the 7th of September, they are considering keeping their silver bullet for possible use when all avenues are closed to reproduction, but that would be a very high-risk strategy, also due to the current international situation, especially in our continent.
This displacement, in itself, meant a victory for the democratic camp, installing politics and its institutions as a place for resolving political conflicts, lowering the possibilities of the seditious paths with which Bolsonarism still flirts.
Step by step, the democratic coalition expands its field of influence, as now with the inclusion of Marina Silva, with her history of struggles in favor of democracy, and the auspicious adhesion to the Lula-Alkmin candidacy of personalities and politicians from the left is already announced. of Brizola's PDT that could guarantee victory in the first round, sealing the fate of the election with lime.
There are just a few days to go, victory is within reach, and with it the paths will be opened towards the conclusion of the process of democratization of society that we left half way back in the 1980s, chipping away at its deepest roots the legacy of what is still left of the poor conformation of our society, daughter of a patrimonialism that was based on a landlord and slaveholding base.
*Luiz Werneck Vianna is a professor at the Department of Social Sciences at PUC-Rio. Author, among other books, of The Passive Revolution: Iberism and Americanism in Brazil (Revan).
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