By ALEXANDRE ARAGÃO DE ALBUQUERQUE*
The 2016 coup and Ciro Gomes' choices
Coup is a perverse choice. The evil intentions that move it are picked up and recognized over time. Political science enshrines a coup as a political act of betrayal of someone or something. It is an extreme resource that the ruling class uses to recover threatened privileges, retained within an unfair and unequal order built throughout the history of a given society.
As attested by Professor Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos, in his book The hindered democracy (FGV, 2017), the current coup is even worse than that of 1964 insofar as it has an anti-national and reactionary commitment much more violent than that of the time. Those soldiers of 64, despite having created a despotic and murderous section, nurtured commitments to nationalist interests. This is not the case of the 2016 coup, in which almost all of the coup right (civil, military and religious), led by Temer, is deeply anti-national.
The events that marked the last week of September further clarify the greed on which the usurping booty of natural riches, the Brazilian public heritage and the life of the working families, degraded in their basic human rights by the Bolsonarist antisocial policies.
On the one hand, the results achieved by the investigative work of the CPI on Genocide, installed in the Senate, confirmed, through testimonial and documentary evidence, all the allegations of moral and financial corruption implanted in the structure of the Bolsonaro government, ranging from denialism to the production of stratagems for the extermination of human beings, copying the worst examples of the German Nazi horrors (1929-1945). Therefore, the CPI clearly demonstrates that the Bolsonaro government not only perpetrated common and responsible crimes, but also crimes against humanity.
On the other hand, the leaks of the “Pandora Papers”, a series of reports made within the scope of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), of which the Magazine Piauí, the Metrópoles, Poder 360 and Agência Pública portals have shown that the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, together with the president of the Central Bank of Brazil, Roberto Campos Neto, have a large sum of US dollars deposited in tax havens.
In September 2014, Guedes founded “offshore” Dreadnoughts International, in the British Virgin Islands, a “tax haven” in the Caribbean. It is not known to this day why they were called “paradise”. In fact, they are criminal territories that hide the dirty money that circulates around the world. Guedes contributed US$9,55 million to his offshore account.
Article 5 of the Code of Conduct of the High Federal Administration prohibits high-ranking officials (such as Guedes and Campos Neto) from maintaining financial investments in Brazil and abroad, which may be affected by government policies. In January 2019, Guedes became the main minister of the Bolsonarist government (Posto Ipiranga). Like former judge Moro, declared incompetent and suspect by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), he could not have been invited nor accepted to assume the Ministry of Economy. Guedes is the one who, in the famous Ministerial Meeting of Swearing, in May 2020, addressing Minister Damares, sentenced with his “refined public ethics”: “Let everyone fuck themselves (sic!) the way they want”.
The same embarrassment occurs with Campos Neto. As president of the Central Bank, and at the same time the owner of an “offshore” in a “tax haven”, he has privileged access to strategic data regarding exchange and interest rate policies, capable of affecting financial investments, inside and outside Brazil. Also like Moro, Campos Neto should be declared suspicious and incompetent to assume such a presidency.
Finally, the last event that draws attention at the end of last week was yet another millimetric virulence by Ciro Gomes against PT militancy, when he ended his speech on Paulista, on the 2nd: “The Brazilian people are much greater than fascism red or yellow green”.
He had already recently stated that “he will use the electoral campaign to remind the country that Lula adopted corruption as a method of government when he was elected in 2002”.(https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/radar/lula-levou-a-corrupcao-para-o-centro-dopoder-diz-ciro-gomes/).As there had also been a “fake news” in the same week, very much like Bolsonarists, associating Lula with Prevent Senior, a company investigated by the CPI on Genocide.
Like Bolsonaro, Ciro Gomes has, so far, been through seven political parties (PDS – formerly ARENA –, PMDB, PSDB, PPS, PSB, PROS and PDT). For senator Jacques Wagner (PT-BA), Ciro, who was once a minister in the Lula government, with this strategic position, provides a “disservice to democracy”. According to the senator from Bahia, "he thinks he will win the votes of the extreme right with these frivolous criticisms of Lula".
As Governor Flávio Dino (PSB-MA) and Carlos Siqueira, national president of the PSB, recently stated, the enemy to be defeated is Bolsonaro and the fascism of which he is the bearer: one cannot admit nonsense at such a serious time.
Candidate candidate for a so-called “third way” being formed by the baton of Rede Globo, Ciro Gomes chose to center fire on Lula and the PT to convince Bolsonaro's electorate that he would be the most reliable to defeat Lula in 2022. Valter Pomar, Ciro is not content with just spewing insults, but aims at a model of national development in which the people are a mere subaltern. And to guarantee this popular subalternity, he needs to neutralize the left. That is, Ciro follows the neo-fascist playbook developed since the 2016 Coup. Thus, his hatred of Lula and the PT owes nothing to Bolsonarism. Logically, if he can, he will break on top of those he hates.
But what draws attention in all of this is that certain PT politicians from Ceará, such as Governor Camilo Santana (PT-CE) or Federal Deputy José Guimarães (PT-CE), treat Ciro as a rude ally, peremptorily becoming silent in the face of his continued attacks strategic to Lula and the PT. As pointed out by Pomar in his article on the portal Brazil 247, the silence of these PT politicians and leaders from Ceará, only Freud explains. Or perhaps a little knowledge of history and political science as well.
*Alexandre Aragão de Albuquerque Master in Public Policy and Society from the State University of Ceará (UECE).