By SIMON PEDRO*
The institutions participated in the 2016 Coup and, if not allies of the president, are just managing the political crisis
The publication of the video of the April 22 ministerial meeting caused a real frenzy. Bolsonaro’s meeting with his “team” of ministers and presidents of state-owned companies and closest assistants took place when the coronavirus crisis was already installed by the growth in the number of infected and dead people and, although we already knew some details of the president’s speeches and his ministers, leaked to the press of Moro's testimonies in the inquiry opened by the STF, in fact some others came as news, such as that of the Minister of the Environment about taking advantage of the pandemic crisis to end environmental legislation at once and the revelation that Bolsonaro's project is to arm the population for a probable civil war.
What was seen, in fact, was something grotesque, the total nudity of a government that doesn't care about the dramas of the population, the indecorous word of people who have no idea of the importance of the position they occupy, people who are unprepared and whose proposals they are only to destroy the minimum of civility that the Brazilian people conquered and tried to tie in the 1988 Constitution in the form of rights and regulations. The speech by Minister Ricardo Salles proposing to take advantage of the fact that the country and the press are distracted by the news of deaths from the Coronavirus to end the legislation that protects environmental resources is scandalous, to say the least!
The intentions of Bolsonaro and his group were clear, based on their small view of the world, which despises democracy's efforts to resolve conflicts through the art of politics and understands that politics is a permanent war to asphyxiate or eliminate all those who stand up to it. against the enemies who are those who criticize his authoritarian acts or who stand in the way contrary to his intentions of transforming the country into a dictatorial society that protects looters of land and mineral wealth and promotes the interests of the few members of the privileged club, also including the rabble of his friends, militiamen and smart guys, looking for boobies and privileges and where the true motto is the old “those who can more cry less”. At the limit, Bolsonaro's interest is purely that of his family circle, just like the mafias around the world. If there is a government project behind the meeting, this is it!
Meanwhile, the people are dying from the virus and from the despair of hunger and unemployment, problems that the fascists who are in the government have zero interest in solving.
Bolsonaro never left the stage. It is evident that his speech, by placing himself with an “honest” and anti-system man, who is facing the privileged and corrupt and that is why “they do not let me govern”, encourages the radicals who are faithful to him and deceives a part of citizens, outraged by “corruption” and especially the poorest, who suffer from this system that excludes them and throws them to their own luck in the midst of violence, hunger and unemployment and who cannot feel or understand the benefits of a democratic system and therefore authoritarian exits are seen with sympathy. The content of his speeches at the meeting and at other times reinforce him as this leader imbued with the mission, earthly or even heavenly, to reform all that is wrong that is there. But Bolsonaro has always been that, he has always made the narrative of hate and violence for those who blindly follow him, but who, according to the latest opinion polls, have been decreasing.
Yes! Crimes were exposed there, such as the arbitrary decision to interfere in the Federal Police to protect the family against what he calls “slutty”, such as the preaching of a coup against the Supreme Court with defenses of imprisonment of the ministers of the Maximum Court and death of governors and mayors, turned into occasional enemies.
The questions that arise from all this is: what will happen? How will institutions react?
The video could indeed become an important piece to boost and justify the impeachment of the fascist president, already requested by leftist parties, civil society organizations, personalities and jurists. The veiled threats, and later fulfilled, of personal interference in the Federal Police, were only not greater because the STF interfered. But let's face it, the Supreme has acted little so far, less than it could have done.
Let us remember that for much less Dilma was beaten, including by the STF itself.
But let us not be under any illusion. The institutions participated in the 2016 Coup and, if not allies of the president, are just managing the political crisis. Minister Celso de Mello did show a small flash of courage when opening the inquiry into interference in the PF and hearings by ministers, including the military, perhaps because he is leaving at the end of the year and will certainly be replaced by a pure fascist of law . But in the case of the seizure of the president's cell phone, he only forwarded the request for analysis to the Attorney General of the Republic. He could not have forwarded it, but justified that he gave bureaucratic forwarding. So far we have not seen the STF manifest itself or refute the threat to
Democracy and the STF itself. Celso de Mello himself already knew about Bolsonaro's interference in the Federal Police and the only relevant thing he did was to publish, edited, the video with the information that had already been, much of it, leaked to the press.
The STF has been reacting drop by drop, such as giving governors relative autonomy in combating the pandemic. But on the structural question of preventing the galloping advance of fascism, what have you done so far? By the way, it won't! They prefer to leave this task to the other institution, Congress. There, only if Centrão drowns in the gluttony of its corrupt people who are already renting their support in exchange for positions and blessings.
It is evident that the speeches and postures of the participants of the meeting that will go down in the history of Brazilian politics will have consequences for Bolsonaro and his ministers and will bring damage to his already frayed image, including in the group of supporters. What doesn't exist is a “silver bullet” to liquidate the fascist leader once and for all. This will have to be done patiently and firmly by the opposition as a whole.
The situation of our country, already the second in death by the Pandemic and also sinking in the political, economic and environmental crises, is desperate. It demands that the leaders of the democratic parties, the leaders of institutions representing civil society, social movements, intellectuals and artists, militants and popular leaders unite now to demand the end of this disastrous government – this must be the central objective – because its permanence is the certainty of a neo-fascist dictatorship that has already put its head and part of its body out of the egg, as it was revealed in the grotesque ministerial meeting.
*Simao Pedro he was state deputy (2003-2015) and municipal secretary of services in the Haddad administration.