By Alternativa Socialista, ISL-Brasil
The tragedy announced beats records day after day. The average of casualties and the casualties every 24 hours caused by Covid-19 only grow at a fast pace. The Brazilian strain P1, which has already spread to all Brazil, causes an uncontrolled level of infections and increases the number of casualties, affecting the younger population and extending the average stay at the hospital, which saturates the bed capacity. It has been twelve days in a row with a record-beating average of casualties, besides 50 days in which casualties surpassed 1000 a day.
The general director of the Hospital Sírio-Libanês (one of the most important in the private sector in SP), Paulo Chapchap, spoke of a war scenario in Brazil and defended the immediate adoption of more restrictive measures, under penalty that if they are not adopted, the situation will get even worse. The Fiocruz (the public institute for research and development in biological sciences), in relation to the increase in the number of infections and deaths, stated in a technical note published on 03/03/2021 “that they are just the tip of the iceberg”.
The policy of the Bolsonaro administration does not come out of denialism from the beginning, with campaigns against the use of masks and vaccination. At the WHO, Brazil was the only developing country to oppose the release of vaccine patents. The country has an average of 5.3 people vaccinated per 100 and voted against the measure along with countries such as the United Kingdom (35 doses per 100 inhabitants), the United States (28/100) and Switzerland (11/100). This government’s disregard for the lives of working people is open and appalling, and endangers the lives of thousands inside and outside Brazil. Its policy responds to market pressure, on the one hand, but also to the impossibility of responding to the country’s growing economic and social crisis. Unlike the previous year, today it is not possible for the government to launch an Emergency Subsidy of 600 reais to make a new Lockdown a reality, and that is where both the federal and state governments are, from “left” to right. This explains why no governor so far has adopted the Lockdown in their state, creating great tension with the Bolsonaro administration, demanding it to take measures such as the emergency subsidy, among others. In one year since the beginning of the pandemic, food prices rose 15% in the country, inflation for the period was 5.20%, according to data published by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). In these 12 months of pandemic, the price of soybean oil rose by 87.89%, rice by 69.80%, potatoes by 47.84% and long-life milk by 20.52%. The economic situation of the country affects the entire working class and poor people, which, combined with the pandemic, results in an explosive cocktail in the social situation.
The emergency PEC (Constitutional Amendment Project), a new setback for Bolsonaro’s government.
A headline in yesterday’s Folha de São Paulo (hours after the vote in the Chamber of Deputies) says: “The Government is forced to dehydrate the emergency PEC in order not to suffer a defeat”. The voted measure causes the suspension of the salary cut and the creation of positions for public workers, despite having to withdraw the proposal to cancel career progressions and promotions, is a hard blow for the workers of the State. But Bolsonaro’s government has such a big problem that with the vote on this measure (besides being insufficient in relation to the size of the austerity intended by the economic team of Minister Paulo Guedes), it opens a front of conflict with the Military Police, a sector allied to the president and of great value to his social base. The Brazilian Police Union (UPB) has launched today a strike threat if the measure is maintained.
In addition, the government had to backtrack on its attempt to cancel the mandatory minimum spending in the Education and Health funds, a measure that meant a major blow to the working class and was immediately rejected by various sectors of the population. It was also eliminated from the proposal to remove resources destined to Environment and Culture, among others.
The result was providing an insufficient Emergency Subsidy, of an average of 250 reais and to a smaller number of beneficiaries. With it they hope to achieve the necessary social tranquility to surf over a health, political, economic and social crisis that is far from calming down.
For our lives, Bolsonaro and Mourão out now! Not in 2022
“To avoid 400,000 deaths on Mother’s Day, it is necessary to rebel against Bolsonaro”, these are not our words, they are from a journalist (Vinicius Torres Freire) from Folha de SP in his opinion column. But we totally agree with them, it is necessary to remove the murderous government of Bolsonaro with the strength of our mobilized class and fighting. We cannot wait a year, it is the life of thousands of people that is at stake. That is why we do not accept the proposal to stand idly by while the pandemic progresses and the government tries to survive at the cost of our misery and our rights.
It is necessary to build the broadest unity in the struggle against this government of death. A national and international unity to overthrow Bolsonaro, Mourão and the whole government. Stopping this slaughter is an immediate necessity, not for the next elections as some pose. The policy of the PT, Lula, the current majority leadership of the PSOL and other progressive sectors, of discussing electoral fronts today is the best way to keep Bolsonaro’s murderous government in power.
Lula, now running for the presidency, speaks of governing to return to have in this country a “serious capitalist state, promoter of development”, taking advantage of the benefits of agribusiness and giving more weapons to the police that “poor them” works with old material. For this he proposes to reissue the great Frente Amplio that unites right and left, with the only condition of agreeing on the need to remove Bolsonaro from office, by electoral means, to recover that serious capitalist state. In PSOL there are debates, for example, Guilherme Boulos, minutes after finishing Lula’s press conference (where he was invited to the stage) posted on Twitter: “The unity of the left is necessary against Bolsonaro. Now, in the struggle to save lives and fight hunger. In 2022, to rebuild Brazil.”
We say that it is urgent that the union centrals come out of their paralysis and urgently call for the struggle against this government, for vaccines for all and the release of patents, for an emergency subsidy of a minimum wage and all the necessary budget to implement the urgent health measures that are needed from end to end in Brazil, truly unifying the Health System into a single public and state system that responds to the needs of all the people, thus avoiding that only those who can pay have access to quality health while the poor die at the doors of the hospitals. To fight for living wages for the front line health workers who leave their lives in this pandemic. For the non-payment of the public debt and to allocate those funds to save lives. The situation is of extreme urgency, we need you to call a General Strike now to put the needs and lives of the working class ahead of any profits of the capital.