By CARLOS TAUTZ*
History and Sunday in Brasilia show that Lula will need institutional preparation and permanent mobilization of his social base.
Still looking for the final culprits of the terrorist attack on Brasilia, the Lula government must prepare as soon as possible for situations of similar or even worse severity, which will happen if the president carries out the “program” announced during the 2022 campaign.
As for the looting and destruction on Sunday (8/1), the blame is already clear: (i) the intentional omission of the Army commander, who made two battalions with the constitutional responsibility of protecting the presidential palaces disappear; (ii) connivance of the civil intelligence system, which is still influenced by the previous holder, a submissive general to the genocidal ex-president; (iii) the inexplicable confidence placed by the Minister of Justice in the security scheme promised by the Bolsonarist government of the Federal District; and (iv) the unacceptable acceptance by the Minister of Defense of the Planalto Military Command, with a coup orientation.
Immediately, there is a lesson to be drawn from Sunday's attacks: it is urgent to redefine the constitutional powers over the security of the State and international representations in the Federal District. It is not possible for the national State to leave its security to a provincial government dependent on neighborhood squabbles as the government of the Federal District has always been and tends to be.
The memory of destabilization
Now, having said that, and taking into account that Lula will effectively try to put his “program” into practice, look ahead. As we already have in mind the recipe for destabilization applied against previous PT governments (2003-16), it is more or less logical to foresee what will happen and how the reaction will occur, if Lula actually fulfills what he promised in the campaign.
Enemies will not be visible as in the Esplanade pitched battle; they will no longer perform in musty-smelling olive green uniforms or counterfeit CBF-yellow T-shirts. The actions of the coup underworld will most of the time be invisible to the unwary, but permanent and mobilizing new coups.
The corporate press will call the coup underworld by the generic codename "market", and we will only begin to realize that the underground action of these powerful enemies is already underway when the white dondocas of Leblon return to complain for half an hour in the Jornal Nacional about the unacceptable prices of tomatoes and potatoes.
At that moment, the enemies will already have organized ostensible boycotts (as it has been done since Chile, 1973) on the part of the Brazilian economy that resisted the privatist ferocity in the continuum Michel Temer-Jair Bolsonaro. In particular, about what was left of Petrobras and the enormous pre-salt reserves.
The five points of Lula's "program"
The boycott will probably hit the screens and the streets when Lula has already announced his intention to put into practice the informal five-point “program” that he advanced throughout the 2022 campaign. -shy democracy”, is thus listed by economist Eduardo Costa Pinto, professor at UFRJ: (1) At Petrobras, change the policy of internationalized fuel prices and distribute minimum dividends to resume company investments and allocate at least R$ 150 billion annually circulating in the real economy. Under the presidency of the genocidal, Petrobras was forced to deliver its assets to the market at a low price, sell fuel and derivatives at prices quoted in dollars and stop investing in the urgent expansion of its infrastructure to illegitimately hand over profits to large national private shareholders. and international.
(2) Review the labor reform, one of the axes of the absurd and current profit rate of large companies. The reform increased exploitation of the workforce and reduced direct and indirect costs of production, generating record profits for the “mega-bourgeoisie”; (3) increase public investment. For this, according to Costa Pinto, it would be necessary to end the spending ceiling and all fiscal regimes; (4) putting the poor back in the budget; and (5) putting the rich on the IRS.
As Eduardo Costa Pinto observes, the “mega-bourgeoisie”, both internal and external, will not peacefully watch the implementation of such a “program”. If put into practice, it would make Lula equal, or even surpass, Getúlio Vargas, the president who has most influenced the construction of the foundations of national capitalism.
Getúlio Vargas modernized and formalized the labor exploitation system through the adoption of a legal infrastructure (Social Security and the Consolidation of Labor Laws), and – by creating Petrobras and Eletrobrás and providing the country with the energy needed to transform the commodity –, provided the objective bases for the transformation and large-scale reproduction of capital in Brazil.
In his 580 days in prison, Lula – admittedly – reviewed two points that until then were stony in his training as a post-dictatorship metallurgist: (a) former Constituent Assembly of 1986-88, Lula, who at that time supported the definition of Brazil as territory free of nuclear bombs, he admitted that, today, he would vote for the right for the country to develop nuclear capacity; and (b) by reading the trilogy by the Ceará journalist Lyra Neto about Getúlio Vargas, he overcame the prejudice (and envy, I comment) that the left has always dedicated to the former president of Rio Grande do Sul.
Well, now, with his “program”, Lula manifests his intention to go beyond Getúlio Vargas. But history and Sunday in Brasilia show that much more than just personal courage and disposition, Lula will also need institutional preparation and permanent mobilization of his social base.
*Carlos Tautz is a journalist and doctoral candidate in history at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF).
The A Terra é Redonda website exists thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
Click here and find how
