After all, does PSDB still exist? Judging by the official note issued when Lula was released, no more. The cantilena of Bolsonaro's speech, military and far-right militants is repeated
By Francisco Foot Hardman*
Faced with the substantive change in the political situation with Lula's release, FHC did not miss the chance to distill his reactionary and resentful arrogance, disguised as moldy wisdom: “— Lula is free, but remains ineligible under the 'clean slate' law. – We have to strengthen the 'democratic center'”.
After the PSDB lost resoundingly, both in the outcome of the parliamentary-media-judicial coup against Dilma, by having to remove Aécio from the visiting room, and later in the 2018 elections, when the monotonous Alckmin achieved the feat of, having almost half the time of electoral propaganda, garnering less than 5% of the votes for President, plucked toucan chiefs were aimless, without speech, without program.
In addition to the two aforementioned, who still remembers Serra and Aloysio, all of whom were implicated in very serious accusations and shielded by a venal judiciary, which date back to the brazen purchase of votes for the amendment of FHC's reelection, to the documented privatization of teles, to Dersa Paulo Preto, the bank accounts in Switzerland, the mishaps on the São Paulo Metro, not to mention the excesses and deviations of Aécio and Azeredo in Minas?
FHC tries as hard as he can not to leave the limelight. For this, it has an incredible media complacency. As if this pretense mediocre aurea that prescribes as a discursive place were something more than what it really is: mediocre redundancy of a confused and superficial rhetoric. He tends to use “Brazil” as the subject of inflated sentences, as if he were the special envoy of the revived nationality.
In place of the Bolsonarist god, it seems that FHC intends to place himself as “above everything”, and it is not by chance that he tried what he could not to become a senator for life or, more recently, to be tertiary in an indirect election for President-buffer, after the coup against Dilma, in case Temer was also impeached.
Toucan chieftains alienated from the São Paulo-Mineiro apparatus, which is the core of the PSDB, by the group of the extreme right-wing cordial, let's say, in this irresistible rise of João Doria to control the machine and the votes (former governor Alberto Goldman, one of the victims of this massacre, defined very well the modus operandi of the current São Paulo governor and presidential pre-candidate: predator) never seemed willing to fight to regain lost party hegemony. To the terrain of internal political struggle, they prefer miraculous, personalistic and, strictly speaking, extremely anti-democratic solutions, because they are anti-systemic, based on occasional populism and, it must be recognized, on media lies and salvific illusions.
But who is anointed to rebuild the “democratic center” that, strictly speaking, never existed? The Huck formula is coming. It was the journalist Reinaldo Azevedo who defined this appeal with precision and mischief: Huck would be the “Sílvio Santos of the hipsters”. In addition to being, in fact, in real life, FHC's godson by marriage, configuring cronyism in a modern version, as befits the oligarchic-media coronelismo of our most backward and recalcitrant elite, no less “cool” in this mythological universe of society. celebrity and phrases nonsense in a half-truth way, as a matter of fact, exchanging registers, is also his godfather's favorite style.
Cowards or lazy to start over by defeating Doria within what was left of the toucan apparatus, FHC and some of these chiefs, widows of the coup that led to the current Brazilian tragedy, of whose horrors we have daily examples, now plot a new maneuver to torpedo what is left of party-political system, inventing new bread and circuses for the masses, and designing in Huck, a creature of the society of the spectacle who lives off the exploitation of poor people, the messianic “renovator” as Collor was back there and, today, in the form more degraded, with neo-fascist inks, Bolsonarism. For that purpose, it will have the approval and funds of the business and financial world and, as in the cases of Collor and Bozo, strategic support from Rede Globo de Manipulação.
In today's classic novel Quarup, by Antonio Callado (1967), an allegory magnificently built around the social conflicts in Brazil that led to the military coup of 1964, and where the indigenous question appears with all the necessary emphasis, an expedition is narrated that seeks to find the geodesic center of the Brazil, in the heart of the Central Plateau. When they finally get there, all they find is a huge hollow, empty anthill.
Because the “democratic center” proclaimed by FHC looks a lot like that anthill with only holes, of abandoned tunnels. Sleight of hand by someone who has always governed for the upper floor, by someone who has always disowned the immense people excluded by the actions and inactions of state power. From a dazzled, first of all, with himself.
But, after all, does the PSDB still exist? Judging by the official note issued by its current president and Doria's boss, Bruno Araújo, no more. Note that repeats the cantilena of Bolsonaro's speech, military and extreme right militants, when Lula's release.
Incapable, because they know they are losers in advance, to coexist with an organized and active left, they appeal, as is now seen in Bolivia, to pure coup d'état, whether it comes directly from the guns, comes from fascist agitation, or, in short, from the media-judicial-parliamentary manipulations. Combinations between these instances are, in fact, the most common in the history of Latin America. They, yes, true promoters of the destabilization and deconstruction of the fragile democratizing pact inaugurated with the 1988 Constitution.
FHC and his fan club of friends of Huck have no political legitimacy to defend democracy. They should look at their own hands and feet, mired in the succession of blows from 2016 – started with the action of the illustrious Miguel Reale Jr., who, among other feats, lifted his beloved disciple, Janaína Paschoal, into Bozo’s arms. And that paved the way for the triumphant predator Doria, a surfer on the Bolsonaro wave in 2018, and today a solo runner, the generous owner of the toucan booty, heading to Planalto.
These are the democrats of the hollow earth, of the empty anthill. In the second round of 2018, not a word was spoken against the sinister threat of restoring the basements of the dictatorship (yesterday, Fleury squadron and OBAN de Ustra, today organized crime militias, under the aegis of their enthusiastic protectors in the first echelon of the Republic).
I cannot forget the pathetic interview that the brilliant philosopher José Arthur Gianotti gave to journalist Maria Lydia Flandoli, in Jornal da Gazeta, just 48 hours before the second round, on 26/10/18. After lecturing, with full knowledge of the facts, on the dangers of the fascist advance, in Brazil and in the world, asked about which candidacy would be the “least bad” for the future of the country, he declared: “—My dear Maria Lydia, if I knew how to answer, I would sleep peacefully. But I don't know, that's why I don't sleep well these days”.
And now, toucans from the hollow center, are you sleeping peacefully? Will Huck and Angélica come to cherish their dreams of freedom far away from the crowd? Judging by the pomp in any circumstances that the ineffable FHC retains, yes. Because all they want is privilege and power. The poor and suffering people, an occasional extra in this pantomime, should stay out of the party.
*Francisco Foot Hardman he is a full professor at the Institute of Language Studies at Unicamp; currently visiting professor at Peking University.