By ALEXANDRE ARAGÃO DE ALBUQUERQUE*
A zero to the left, here's what represented the supposed strength of Bolsonarism in the recent election
As a result of the municipal elections, a new design of political forces began in Brazil. If previously Brazilian voters were induced to an irresponsible adventure, led by the media, legal and institutional articulation of the coup, installed in 2016, electing in 2018 as president a candidate with explicit authoritarian and fundamentalist content, demonizing the progressive policies of construction of the State of Well -being Brazilian put into practice by the Workers' Party governments, from 2003 to 2014, now in 2020 the electoral result showed a certain accommodation of the popular will around less adventurous proposals, despite being conservative.
On the one hand, there is a crushing defeat of that artificially constructed 2018 episode. A zero to the left, this is what represented the supposed strength of Bolsonarism in the recent election. On the other hand, there was a very expressive growth of the right in parties such as DEM (won 193 more city halls), PP (187 more city halls), PSD (113 more city halls), Republicans (105 more city halls). The political parties that lost most city halls were PSDB (lost 273 city halls), MDB (lost 261) and PSB (lost 153). Ciro Gomes’ PDT, despite all its euphoria, lost 20 city halls compared to 2016.
It never hurts to record that the 2018 election was tainted by the impediment of President Lula’s exercise of political rights in disputing that competition, since General Eduardo Villas Bôas, then commander of the army, publicly threatened, by posting on his twitter account , the ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) when voting on the Habeas Corpus in favor of President Lula. But now, with one more aggravating factor, the revelations about the hiring of Sérgio Moro as partner-director of an American company, which recognizes in its documents that the triplex was in fact from OAS, a company that is linked to Odebrecht's lawsuit in Lava Jato, the STF is obliged to declare null the decisions of that former judge in relation to President Lula in that process.
In view of this fact, in his twitter account, the former federal judge and current governor of Maranhão, Flávio Dino, declared: “If Sérgio Moro a judge were to try Sérgio Moro as a politician, he would not escape a sentence of 20 years in jail, for corruption, money laundering, etc. Sérgio Moro, a judge, would say that this act (of Sérgio Moro being a managing partner of this US company) would reveal a payment disguised as a bribe”.
Returning to the theme, the design involving the new arrangement of forces, established from the outline of the relationship between the state government and the city halls of the capitals, as shown in Table 1 below, was comprised of 16 parties, of which 12 are at the head of the governments state. Some of them were unable to elect their representatives in 2020 in the capitals, as is the case with the PT, PSL, PSC, PC do B and Novo, even if they participated in municipal coalitions, as occurred in Belém - PA, where the PT made up the coalition “Novas Ideias”, with PSOL electing its candidate Edmílson Rodrigues.
Tabela 1
As Guillermo O'Donnel recalls, democracy is not limited to formal freedoms, only as an authorizing system in elections, freeing itself from facing socially determined obstacles that prevent citizens from enjoying integral health. There is a need for policies aimed at equalization so that the subjects directly affected by the structure of social injustice can have real chances to exercise their rights in fact. So it's time for mayors and governors to get down to business. There's a lot to do.
*Alexandre Aragão de Albuquerque Master in Public Policy and Society from the State University of Ceará (UECE).
