By CHICO WHITAKER*
In addition to “Bolsonaro out!”, it is necessary to shout: “Out already!
There are dilemmas, such as “Punish or remove?”, which require a prompt response: punishment is necessary, removal is extremely urgent!
A growing number of Brazilian men and women ask themselves: how could we elect as President of the Republic a person so unprepared for this role, emotionally unbalanced and intellectually primitive, who has been systematically and programmed dismantling all the civilizing advances of accountability and social control that we have built since redemocratization, and still tragically aggravating the deadly effects of the pandemic that befell us?
Now, faced with the almost devastated land – including the Amazonian natural reserve, which is mostly Brazilian but is of decisive importance for life on the entire planet – we move on to the next question: what to do to keep you away from a power that, although he conquered through elections (albeit through serious electoral manipulations) he is using to destroy – a mission declared in Washington shortly after he took office?
The first proposal with this objective was that of impeachment – a remedy already used more than once in Brazil. But the barrier erected by a majority of Deputies, elected in the same wave and whose position is negotiated at the counters of corruption, seems insurmountable. One hundred and a half impeachment requests sleep in the drawers of the Presidency of the Chamber, an ally of the President.
For some time, other outraged people have been proposing that, in view of the numerous common crimes committed by the President, a criminal case be instituted, which would have the power to lead to his removal possibly more quickly and directly than through impeachment. Since March of this year, four representations in this regard – one of them coming from the highest body of lawyers in Brazil – have already been forwarded to the Attorney General of the Republic, on whom the initiation of this process depends. Added to them is now the devastating report by the Senate CPI. But the Attorney General is preferring to maintain his alliance with the President who took him to the post, even if this makes his biography embarrassing, due to his complicity with the criminal: he did nothing about the four representations and seems to intend to analyze the CPI report very slowly.
A light came on at the end of the tunnel when the Superior Electoral Court decided to analyze the allegations of irregularities in the campaign of the ticket elected in 2018, for possible impeachment. But that same Court soon erased it, when it considered that it did not have the necessary evidence for a decision on the matter - already difficult because the third of the four years of thes mandates. To mitigate the disappointment caused, the Court annulled the mandate of a deputy for the same reasons, and committed itself not to allow such irregularities to happen again – which it now knows better.
Faced with these difficulties, there are those who are committed to at least the Justice punish exemplarily the current President and the profiteers who support him – opportunistic politicians and greedy businessmen – for the many crimes that the CPI of the Senate opened wide to the whole country. There are even thoughts of taking their crimes against humanity to international courts. Others opt for an increasing weariness of the President, so that he is simply defeated at the polls in 2022.
But there is a problem – a serious problem: in this context, with his actions and omissions, the current President will continue to help the covid 19 virus to be as deadly as possible, making us live an enormous and painful human tragedy; at the same time, he will continue to increase, every day, the social, political, economic and administrative disaster that he has been causing, with his minions. That is why, across the country, “alarm launchers” are heard, so necessary in these dark times: they say “yes” to the necessary punishments that will come with the rhythm of legal and electoral structures, but they also call out, without giving up: “withdrawal now” from the President of the Republic, as soon as possible.
It is a fact: every day that passes with him in power, we will have more pain and more destruction. And if this continues until the end of 2022, we also run the risk of seeing him perform thes maps which he has been announcing for some time, to deny the election results, or even to try to prevent the elections from taking place, encouraging the violence of the militiamen and their followers, which he incited to arm themselves in order to create chaos. The military will then melt down what is left of our fragile democracy, under the pretext of ensuring order in the country.
Within these perspectives, it is urgent – more than continuing to try to build a difficult Broad Front of party-political structures – to unite in a Single Front Outside Now, of citizens, citizens, social organizations, movements and political parties, around successive concrete objectives: first, to get the Attorney General of the Republic to denounce to the Federal Supreme Court the criminal who threatens us all; then convince a larger part than already exists in the Chamber of Deputies to authorize the Federal Supreme Court to prosecute the President and, with that authorization, he is immediately removed. In addition to “Bolsonaro out!”, it is necessary to shout: “Out already! Before it gets even worse than it is!”
Only then will we be able to dream of the fair and solidary Brazil that we all desire.
*Chico Whitaker is an architect and social activist. He was councilor in São Paulo. He is currently a consultant to the Brazilian Commission for Justice and Peace.