Published on: 31 August 2016
The stage for the judgment of the impeachment imposed on elected President Dilma Rousseff was set for a tragic scenario, including the props from tragicomedy, such were the arrangements made to attempt to confer an air of legality on the framework for the current institutional coup. This construction of exits without rupture is not new to Brazilian history – such were the acts that formally ended slavery, the “Scream” for independence and the, as yet unburied, game of the Amnesty Law to benefit rulers and agents of torture at the end of the 1970s.
In its commitment to announce and denounce, CESE is pained by the whiff of fascism in the air, of hasty justice by the mass media, evidencing the extent to which the business elites and the conservative caucus that have taken over the National Congress – thanks to the corrupting private financing of elections – are irresponsible and predatory, with no commitment to the Rule of Law and the rights and common goods that a republic should use to meet the needs of the majority who constitute the Brazilian people.
In the same vein, it impotently watches the hijacking of politics by a significant part of the Judiciary . This ‘vigilantism’ is seen in the arbitrary and casual nature with which institutions deal with rights violations, converging on a common enemy – it is the nature of a fascist climate to visualize an enemy – terrorism for example, as with President Bush, who sacrificed thousands of civilians in the war against Iraq. But the motto could be corruption, drenched in anti-Workers Party sentiment or it could be the war on drugs, which has led to the extermination of black youth, or homophobia and acts of brutality justified by threats to certain family or religious values.
A reading of the context suggests a layered analysis – on the surface, there is the scenario of attempts to legitimize the definitive withdrawal of someone elected through the 54 million votes of the majority of the Brazilian electorate, to be substituted by a vice president whose mandate was revoked by the Regional Electoral Court in his own state, by ministers accused of serious corruption in a range of bodies, by a process that originated in the revenge of the most influential, Machiavellian and corrupt parliamentarian of the current legislature – Deputy Eduardo Cunha/PMDB – who continues to circulate amongst us, freely and with impunity.
A second layer to be viewed clearly is the legitimacy of the impeachment process, an expedient provided for in the Constitution, but which may only be invoked when a crime is committed, rather than as a merely political judgement due to loss of confidence in a given parliamentary majority – a resource not applicable to the current presidential regime, characterizing as an institutional and media coup. Other correlated crimes such as arbitrary imprisonment, the abusive plea bargaining games in the Lava Jato Operation and the selective manner in which the Federal Police and the Ministry of Public Prosecutions seek to criminalize the Workers Party, which led the coalitions of the Lula and Dilma mandates, reinforcing, particularly in international public opinion, the notion that this judgement is a coup.
Another deeper layer is worth examining, which is the now-threatened social policies in favour of the impoverished majorities, whose results launched the country onto the global scene, particularly in Brazil’s exit from the UN’s Map of Hunger, its non-submissive foreign policy, the attention it paid to African countries, its leadership in the composition of the G20 and in the constitution of the BRICS as an alternative development bloc under capitalism. In this new injunction, the discovery of the Pre Salt layer – amongst the most important petroleum reserves in the world – and the constitution of its sharing system, which even includes the formation of a sovereign fund, are all evidence of a dangerous and excessively bold alternative for those who come from the North American imperial backyard.
Finally, and of no less importance, are the consequences of the politically unstable situation that has announced itself for Brazilian democracy in the downgrading of rights: the criminalization of the social movements.
In the face of the neoliberalism of the coalition that has just installed itself in central power, a favourable arena has opened up for the implementation of neoliberal policies: dismantling labour laws, relaxing environmental restrictions, and in a resurgence of violence against traditional peoples and those from the urban peripheries.
We must support resistance in the defence of rights and common goods. In honour of its mission, CESE reasserts its commitment to populist struggles and to the reestablishment of democratic legitimacy, nourished by the hope of the indignant voices that come from the city peripheries.
If it is with a heavy heart that we communicate the death of our democracy, it is with a stubborn spirit that we announce a period of resistance in the defence of democracy and common goods.