By Alternativa Socialista-PSOL / ISL-Brazil.
With considerably less attendance than expected, depite a month of preparation and a massive operation using the federal machinery, Bolsonaro´s rallies shows the limits of his strength and provokes more crisis in his government. It is time to take to the streets to throw Bolsonaro out and bury his coup dream once and for all.
Radicalization as a method of reaction to political fragility
The government is going through a moment of great fragility. Bolsonaro is isolated and under pressure from sectors that had bet on him as a guarantee for the implementation of regressive reforms. The demands of the businessmen against the president focus on the issue of the Administrative and Fiscal Reforms that are still pending, and on the insufficient results of the reforms that have already been approved, but with many limitations that distort the austerity they intended. The market is very concerned about the situation and is looking for a third way on the electoral horizon, turning its back on Bolsonaro’s continuity as president.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis is advancing at the pace of Bolsonaro’s despair. Investments never came, unemployment increased and with it the impoverishment of the population. The economic prospects are for stagflation (high inflation with low growth), which, as we already know, means more poverty, hunger and suffering for workers and poor people. This scenario is combined with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic that continues to attack and cause hundreds of deaths day after day in the country. The social situation is unbearable for the majority and the perspective forecasts more crisis in the coming months.
Unable to respond to the pressures of economic power and facing a growing loss of social support, Bolsonaro decided to radicalize his anti-rights and anti-democracy discourse to consolidate his social base. On the stage set up for the events in Brasilia and São Paulo, where the largest rallies were held, he made speeches against the judiciary, attacking the Attorney General and the STF judges. But at the end of the much-announced Bolsonarist 7S there was no coup, nor the millions of green-yellow protesters they had announced.
The day after the “non-coup”
The Bolsonarist turn out was not the one the president expected, but it was a big mobilization that brought together some 120,000 people on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. The reasons, in addition to the huge budget, which allowed them to pay attendees 100 reales, travel expenses, accommodations and a whole media structure on social networks and the media, Bolsonaro’s 7S counted in its favor with the treacherous policy of withdrawal and fear of the center-left, and the wavering line of the Bolsonaro Out campaign that allowed the gathering of the extreme right to grow and had a weak response to the attacks.
But none of this guaranteed a political victory for the president. Bolsonarism showed all that it is, it was the maximum expression of what the extreme right means today in Brazil. It is a minority sector of society, noisy but in minority, that leaves 7S behind without a coup and with more political crisis. Bolsonaro’s speeches were nothing more than a bluff directed at his base gathered at the events, but their effects were expressed in the economics section of all the newspapers. On September 8, the Ibovespa fell 3.8%, the dollar rose and many economic analysts warned about the dangers for capitalist companies of the instability caused by Bolsonaro.
A new moment of crisis opens for the Bolsonaro government, distancing itself from former allies such as the PSDB, whose national executive informed the following day that it is now in the field of opposition to the government, new requests for impeachment by parties of the traditional right and a call for a “Fora Bolsonaro” rally for September 12 by the group “Direitos já – Forum for democracy”, a space that brings a broad spectrum together, from Lula to FHC.
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Deepen the mobilization against Bolsonaro and build a 99% political alternative
The current scenario poses a fundamental task: to strengthen the struggle for Bolsonaro and Mourão to leave. This unity must be greater, overcoming the current dynamics of separate rallies on weekends, with a calendar of struggle built democratically by the bases of the unions and centrals, in organizations and social movements and in the student movement. It is the most important task of the union and social leaderships to lead the construction of a General Strike, because otherwise we will not be able to defeat the agenda of austerity reforms of the Bolsonaro government and the bourgeois agreement that parliament controls.
At the same time, it is necessary to build a political alternative for workers, indigenous peoples, Black people, women, youth and the peripheries. A political alternative so that the 99% can govern. Leaders like Lula / PT and the entire left of the regime try to take the fight for Fora Bolsonaro to the bourgeois electoral route in 2022 and discipline the people who take to the streets. At this time, the political leaderships act against the General Strike and use the tactic of fear to avoid large rallies and mobilizations. They are the same leaderships that governed in favor of capital for over a decade and continue to speak of “serious capitalism.” They do not say a single word about reversing the regressive reforms, privatizations and other measures against workers and the poor.
Overcoming these political leaderships and building a leftist and socialist political alternative is also a historic task. The social and political crisis advances and with it the struggle for the leadership of the people fighting for Fora Bolsonaro. On the one hand, the left of the regime is organizing for “Lula 2022”; on the other, the traditional right is trying to create a “third way” and is preparing again to contest the streets by calling a rally against the Bolsonaro government for next September 12. The PSOL and the entire independent left must be part of our alternative, without the sectarianism and self-proclamations of some, without the electoral opportunism of others. Our task if to build a great unity that expresses the diversity of the political and social left to allow us to strengthen a true third option, the option of those who have never governed, the option of the excluded and excluded.
From Alternativa Socialista, an internal current of PSOL and part of the Radical Left Movement, we want to invite you to strengthen this political alternative and organize rebellion in an independent, feminist, dissident, ecosocialist, anti-capitalist and internationalist political project. Come with us!