Short texts and objective answers

Porto Alegre (RS), Vehicle yard completely flooded/ Photo: Rafa Neddermeyer/ Agência Brasil
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By TARSUS GENUS*

The managers of the reconstruction and construction bodies of alternatives to what is there cannot and should not pursue electoral objectives with their Government acts in the crisis

“An animal or a god cannot fall into barbarism, because the animal, pure instinct, or a god, pure reason (…) are below or above the human. Only man (…) made of reason and understanding, can leave free space for the destructive impulses of his being or dominate them in a work of civilization.” (JF Mattei, the inner barbarism, P. 58).

1.

Remaking the concept of “civilized”, barbarism and empathy is a historical and moral necessity to reconstitute the best legacies of modernity.

“Time for short texts and objective answers”, I have said to my friends of all ideologies and across the democratic political spectrum, who propose to debate and write about overcoming the catastrophe that is plaguing Rio Grande do Sul. From inside first phase of responses – humanitarian aid, acceleration of social protection by all levels of the State and patching of streets and roads – a second phase is now emerging.

The outlines of the second phase are there: recovery of the road structure and services destroyed by the “flood”, which will be reborn to normalize the maintenance of the wall, urban circulation, intercity transport and the transit of goods. The first and second phases restore normal life, but they do not change future perspectives or promote a friendly communion, production and common life, with nature in rebellion. This is what the third phase should offer.

The first two phases will remain integrated until the end of the reconstruction of Rio Grande do Sul and merge in the reconstruction of the cities and the region, with the recovery of state agencies, scientific and technical, to push the formation of a more developed country, more equal and environmentally reformed. If the federal Government has – and I believe it has – the capacity, based on the tragedy present in the catastrophe, to shape growth with environmental sustainability.

2.

The third phase is the most complex and difficult: to build, not just rebuild what was destroyed, which means that, starting from Rio Grande, we can inspire a new development model for the entire country, with high growth rates, which combine clean energy production, environmental sustainability for industry and agriculture, with the reduction of regional and social inequalities, to be not only stronger, but also more fair.

Qualitative management, the definition of goals, the calculation of costs and the definition of “human capital” – necessary to complete the phases – oppose the supposedly “liberal” spontaneity of those who want to dictate norms of political behavior in the disaster. Now, this management of public management is a State policy and those who promote it, if they cannot, should not interfere in electoral processes, they should be deeply politicized, in the sense given by the Preamble of the Federal Constitution. Before talking nonsense, at least read its Preamble.

Withered liberalism claims that “politics must stay out” of any of the phases of the city or region’s recovery, perhaps because it does not want to identify those responsible, not for the cataclysm (which is the effect of the set of global deregulations), but because their “ liquidators” did not take the technical and institutional measures they should have taken to mitigate them.

What will define steps, recruit staff, seek financing and put the state to work with quality and non-partisanship, is precisely big politics. The managers and leaders of the “recovery”, from any party in the democratic field, are those who will structure State policies, which are opposite to the policies that the majority of the world carries out, which multiplied the effects of the climate tragedy and led us to this situation of disaster.

The managers of the reconstruction and construction bodies of alternatives to what is there cannot and should not aim at electoral objectives with their acts of Government in the crisis, but, if they stop being politicians in the ethical-moral and grandiose sense of the term, they could be just impassive chroniclers of barbarism. Or parrots of dried-up liberalism, adopted by those big people who hate the State fulfilling its public functions, but are always the first to demand not millions, but billions, from the Federal and State Treasury, to get their big businesses back on their feet.

*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (Arts & Crafts) [https://amzn.to/3ReRb6I]


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