By Socialist Revolution – ISL, Brazil
Down with the fiscal cuts. Struggle is in the streets!
The Supreme Federal Court (STF) indicted Jair Bolsonaro for the 2023 coup attempt. The unanimous decision of the First Chamber of the STF, accepting the complaint of the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (PGR), shows that impunity will not prevail… right? The legal system acts at the behest of economic power and all governments have been omissions and/or collaborators of a justice system that represses and kills working people, the poor and the black youth of the peripheries through the police force, while the rich and powerful are amnestied.
Impunity prevails, that’s why our struggle aims to dismantle this legal and repressive apparatus, starting with the demilitarization of the police force and the demand that prosecutors and commissars be elected with revocable mandates by the people. We also defend the unionization of police officers, seeking to ensure that members of the forces are independent of the interests of the governments and are monitored by the people.
In addition to Bolsonaro, key figures such as Walter Braga Netto, Augusto Heleno and seven other defendants must be held accountable for their crimes. We continue to fight for the punishment of the coup plotters responsible for 20 years of military dictatorship that persecuted, tortured and murdered thousands in our country. It is time to put an end to the impunity of past and present military!
The coup attempt, which aimed to keep Bolsonaro in power at any cost, was defeated mainly by the lack of popular support. Although there were calls for demonstrations on March 30 against the amnesty to Bolsonaro and the coup plotters of January 8, the trade union centers and social organizations are still hostages of the “cooling off” policy of PT and Lula, which seeks to channel the entire mobilization process through the institutionality of the bourgeois state, demobilizing and creating fake expectations. That is why the call focused on the policy against amnesty for the coup plotters and did not mention the demands and struggles that the working people, the popular sectors and the youth are leading today in the different mobilizations and struggles that are taking place in our country.
However, the fight against the coup is not limited to punishing those responsible for it. It is necessary to denounce the contradiction of Lula’s government, which in its ranks has members of parties that supported Bolsonaro.
In addition, Lula’s government, through the Fiscal Framework and other anti-popular packages, is imposing a fiscal cut that penalizes workers and benefits the rich, with the support of the parties that previously supported Bolsonaro. Rising interest rates, unemployment and wage cuts are proof that the government is on the side of the powerful, not the people. This policy disappoints the masses who voted for Lula with expectations of better living conditions, thus strengthening Bolsonaro and his reactionary project. If this continues, Lula’s government is favoring a possible return of the extreme right in the next elections.
Revolução Socialista (internal current of the PSOL), the Brazilian section of the International Socialist League (ISL), demands that the trade union centrals and the Povo Sem Medo and Popular Brazil Fronts, especially the majority leadership of the PSOL, show coherence in the fight against the coup and in the fight against the government’s fiscal austerity measures.
It is time to mobilize the working class and the poor against the coup and the fiscal austerity. We need to take to the streets, with all social, trade union and political organizations, to demand:
Immediate imprisonment of all the coup plotters!
Down with the fiscal framework! Repeal of measures that harm workers!
End of the 6×1 working week
Jobs, wage increases and better living conditions for the majority of the population! Against privatizations!
For the end of the Military Police!
