Categoria: Idiomas

Ten possible lessons from the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

It probably is too early to draw lessons from the questionable impeachment that has inaugurated a new paradigm of class coups by means of the Parliament. These first lessons could be of service to those who love democracy and respect the sovereignty of the people, expressed through free elections, as well as the Labor Party, PT, and its allies. Those who have the money, power and knowledge that undergirds the golpistas are characterized by their lack of appreciation for democracy and their willful ignorance of the blatant inequalities among the Brazilian people.

The First lesson is to nourish resilience, that is, to resist, to learn from errors and defeats; and to turn them around. This implies a severe self-criticism, never rigorously done by the PT. It is necessary to be clear about what project must be implemented for the country.

The Second lesson: to reaffirm democracy, the kind that goes to the streets and squares, in contrast to the low intensity democracy, whose representatives, with some exceptions, are bought by the powerful to defend their corporate interests.

The Third lesson: to accept that a coalition presidency is a failure, because it distorts the projects and induces corruption. The alternative is a coalition of people in government with the social movements and sectors of the popular parties, and from there to bring pressure on the parliament.

The Fourth lesson: to acknowledge that neoliberal capitalism, in its present phase of the greatest concentration of wealth, is hurting the primary societies, and destroying ours. The attenuated neoliberalism practiced by the Labor Party, PT, and its allies for the last 13 years, helped bring about a great transformation in Brazil’s history, improving the lives of almost 40 million people, with increased salaries, credit facilities, and tax reform, but deep down, it was not enough. The great mistake of the PT was that it never explained that those social actions resulted from State policies. It therefore created consumers and not conscious citizens. It facilitated acquisition of personal goods, but did little to improve the social capital: education, health, transportation and security. Frei Betto put it well: it created «a populist paternalism that began when the No Hunger Program, an emancipating program, was turned into the Family Minimum. It was compensatory; the people got a fish, but were not taught how to fish». In the present post-coup government, the neoliberal economic policy, radicalized by severe adjustments, which are regressive, and harmful to social rights, will certainly throw back into hunger and misery all those who had been lifted from those scourges.

The Fifth lesson: it is urgent that education and health be given centrality. The Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva–Dilma Roussett governments advanced creation of technical universities and schools. An infirm and ignorant people can never make the qualitative leap to a sustainable prosperity.

The Sixth lesson: to stand courageously with the victims of neoliberal greed, denouncing its perversity, dismantling its excluding logic, taking to the streets, supporting demonstrations and strikes by the social movements and other segments of society.

The Seventh lesson: to be suspicious of everything that comes from above, usually resulting from the politics of class conciliation, done behind the backs of, and against the interests of the people. These politics come as more of the same. They prefer to keep the people ignorant, in order facilitate their domination and accumulation, and weaken any type of critical spirit.

The Eighth lesson: it is urgent to project the utopia of a different Brazil, built on other bases, the principal one of which is the originality and strength of our culture, giving centrality to nature, to human life and the life of Mother Earth, the bases of a biocivilization. Development/growth, necessary to attend, not the desires, but the needs of humanity, which must be at the service not of the market but of life and of safeguarding our ecological wealth. Concomitantly, basic reforms are urgently needed, of politics, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, agrarian and urban reform,… etc.

The Ninth lesson: in order to implement this utopia, there must be a coalition of political and social forces (popular movements, segments of political parties, nationalist businessmen, intellectuals, artists and churches), who are interested in inaugurating the new and viable, that gives shape to the utopia of different type of Brazil.

The Tenth lesson: that the new and viable has a name: radicalizing a democracy that is socialism of the ecological brand, thus, ecosocialism. Neither the Russian totalitarianism nor the deformed socialism of China, that, to tell the truth, excludes nature from the socialist project. But an ecosocialism that seeks potentially to realize the noble dream of everyone: to give what one can and to receive what one needs, including everyone, and fundamentally, Nature.

This project must be implemented now. As ancestral Chinese wisdom expressed, and was repeated by Mao Tse-tung: «if you want to walk one thousand steps, start now by taking the first step». Without that we will never walk the path towards the desired destiny. The present crisis offers us a special opportunity that must not be wasted. That opportunity occurs only few times in history, and now is one of them.

Leonardo Boff  Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The Coups of 1964 and 2016: coups by the same class

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

The coups of 1964 and 2016 share a common structural nature. Both were class coups, by the holders of money and power: the first used the military, the second used the parliament. The means were different, but the results were the same: a coup that destroys democracy and violates popular sovereignty.

Let’s examine the 1964 coup, that toppled Joao Goulart. In his monumental thesis at the University of Glasglow: “1964: the conquest of the State, political action, power and class coup”, (“1964: la conquista del Estado, acción política, poder y golpe de clase”, Vozes 1981) –an 814 pages book, 326 of which are original documents– René Armand Dreifuss clearly said that: «what happened in Brazil was not a military coup, but a class coup with the use of military force» (p. 397).

The assault on the power of the State was plotted by General Golbery de Couto y Silva using four institutions that propagated the idea of the coup: the Institute of Research and Social Studies, (IPES), the Brazilian Institute of Democratic Action, (IBAD), the Group of Analysis of the Situation, (GLC) and the Superior School of War, (ESG). The manifest objective was: «to re-adapt and re-formulate the State» to conform it to the interests of national and transnational capital. Here is the class character of the coup.

The assault on the State happened in 1964 and hardened in 1968, with repression, torture and murder. The National Security Regime became the Capitalist Security Regime.

For the 2016 coup we have a thorough investigation by Jesse Souza, sociologist, and former President of the IPEA, “Radiography of the Coup” (“La radiografia del golpe”, Leya 2016). Like the 1964 coup, Jesse Souza unveils the mechanisms that allowed the moneyed elites to organize the coup, which was carried out in their name by Parliament.

Consequently, it is about a class and parliamentary coup.

Besides this, Jesse emphasizes «that all the coups, including the present one, are a fraud well perpetrated by the owners of money, who in fact are the true “owners of power”». Who makes up that elite? «The moneyed elite is before anything the financial elite, that directs the great banks and investment funds and leads other moneyed sectors such as agribusiness, industry (FIESP) and commerce, supported by the means of mass communication that systematically twist and falsify the social reality as if it were a “devastated land and bankrupt country” (this is an exaggeration), hiding the corporate interests behind the fraudulent coup».

The engine of the whole process, Jesse Souza states again, is the greed of the moneyed elite, who easily appropriate the collective wealth, with other partners such as the ultraconservative means of communication, the juridical-police complex of the State, and a portion of the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), (think of Gilmar Mendes).

The process of impeachment went to the Senate. The Senate moved to impeach the President for the crime of fiscal responsibility. Principal jurists and economists, besides notable testimonies during the hearings and in the official reports of several institutions, roundly denied the existence of responsibility. The majority of Senators did not even bother to attend the meetings with the highly qualified specialists, because they had already made the decision to impeach President Dilma Rousseff.

The audio of the conversation between Romero Juca, minister of planning and the former director of Transpetro, Sergio Machado, reveals the plot: “to put Michel in a great national agreement with the Supreme and with all, everything stops there… and it ends the bleeding of the Lava Jato”. One of the motives behind the coup was also to put beyond the reach of Justice the 49 senators (out of 81) indicted or implicated in corruption. In this way, with the exception of the courageous defenders of President Dilma Rousseff, that type of politicians without morals, decided to remove an honest and innocent woman.

To condemn someone where there is no crime is a coup. A class and parliamentary coup. To stage a coup means to violate the Constitution and betray popular sovereignty, the strength of which elected President Dilma Rousseff with 54 millions votes.

Back in 1964, and now in 2016, be it through the military or through Parliament, the same logic functions: the economic-financial elites and the conservative political caste undertook the theft of a great part of the national treasure (Jesse counts 71,440 people, only 0.05% of the population), undermining the lives and well being of the large majority of the people, reduced to poverty. A large part of Congress is complicit in this coup. In this Congress the same structural intent of guaranteeing the status quo that favors their privileges and earnings prevails.

The PMDB’s project, “A Bridge to the Future”, a liberalism so shameless as to make you blush, reveals the purpose of the coup: to minimize the State, reduce salaries, liquidate the policy of revalorization of salaries, slash monies for social programs, privatize state enterprises, especially Pre-Sal, exclude obligatory expenses of health and education, reduce to a minimum everything that relates to culture, human rights, women and minorities. The ministry is made up of Whites, and a great part of its members are accused of corruption. There are no women, Blacks, or representatives of the minorities.

We are in the midst of a terrifying retrogressive political-social movement, that worsens inequality, our perverse social wound, and erases the social conquests of the 13 years of the Lula-Dilma governments.

There is massive resistance and opposition in the streets, by strong social groups and intellectuals who do not accept a conspiring president without credibility. The solution would be general elections, and through popular sovereignty, a new President would be chosen who truly would represent the country.
Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosophe, Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Brazil’s “Saddest Day”: the parliamentary coup

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

And it happened that in those days, hired assassins disguised themselves as Senators, a significant number, but not all, and decided to attack an honorable and incorruptible woman who blocked their path to State power. Once in power, they would do what they had always done: take the public goods for their personal enrichment, escaping the reach of Justice and carrying on with their privileged situation, as always, at the expense of the people they want to exclude, and marginalize, as a useful reserve army for their services, as chattel.

They took sadistic pleasure in hurting an incorruptible and honorable woman, on the pretext that some of her fiscal practices had been criminal, something that the great majority of legal and economics specialists denied. They staged a farce and betrayed the Constitution. Removing a President without having proven a crime is a coup. The correct term for it is: a “parliamentary coup.” They were petulant, hypocritically claiming that it made them feel bad, even as they spoke of ushering in an “era, a new spring, the beginning of a new Brazil, prosperous and just.” A lie!

The plan, “A Bridge to the Future”, is in fact a bridge backwards, because it would eliminate the gains that the workers, women, Blacks, indigenous peoples, the LGBT communities, the poor and the invisible, had won for the first time in our history in terms of social inclusion, better salaries, health, education, labor law, retirement and access to technical and higher education. And what is worse: they want to keep the people illiterate, so that they will be silent and unable to demand their rights and dignity.

Now it is the Market that matters. Someone who wants medical treatment must go to the Market; and pay.

Whoever wants to go to a University must first go to the Marker, and pay. Everything will be turned into merchandise to be bought and sold. Can dignity be bought? Can solidarity be bought? Must love be purchased? It doesn’t matter. Those things do not count for them. But can someone live and be happy without them?

At the beginning of the conquest and domination of Mexico, there was “the saddest night”, in 1520, when much of the Spanish army was destroyed. Now we have “the saddest day” , in 2016, when a woman President was unjustly divested of the power she gained through the ballot.

In the Senate chambers and in the hallways there is spilled blood. A “political sad night” has fallen on Brazil, stealing hope from those who had climbed out of misery, and who now risk falling back into it.

And those who struggled to consolidate democracy of a social kind and to respect the will of the people, as expressed at the ballot boxes, were betrayed again. This is the day of “the long daggers” that were raised against an honorable woman and that gravely wounded the sovereignty of the people.

Today, August 31, 2016, is a day of sadness. Those who mounted that spectacle and the assassin-Senators will carry the stigma of golpistas and frauds for the rest of their lives. Their consciences will haunt them, and their legacies will be destroyed. The will to condemn cannot replace reason, that leads towards truth. They smothered truth under the mantel of injustice.

They will be in sinister company, the company of those who, years ago, assaulted the State, oppressed the people, tortured many, as they have done now with President Dilma Rousseff, and murdered those who sought to restore democracy.

And, at the end of their lives, they will face a greater Judge, who will expose all the injustice they have consciously committed.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher,Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The impeachment of a dignified and innocent President by a mentally and financially corrupt pack

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Once upon a time there was a nation that was great in terms of her territory and her cheerful people who, nevertheless, were unjustly treated. The people suffered misery mostly in the great peripheries of the cities and deep in the interior of the country. For centuries it had been governed by a small wealthy elite, who never cared about the fate of the poor. As a mulatto historian put it, the people was socially «castrated and castrated again; bled and bled again».

But slowly Brazil’s poor began to organize, in every type of movement, accumulating social power and nourishing a dream of a different Brazil. They managed to transform social power into political power. They helped found the Labor Party, PT, (From the Portuguese, Partido dos Trabalhadores). One of its members, a survivor of the great tribulation and a machine operator, became President of Brazil. In spite of the pressures and concessions he suffered at the hands of the national and transnational moneyed class, he accomplished a significant opening in the system of domination that allowed him to create humanizing social policies. A segment of the population, equivalent to the entire population of Argentina, was lifted out of misery and hunger. Thousands of Brazilians got their own little homes, with electricity and other services. The Blacks and the poor had access, previously impossible, to technical and higher education. But above all, they felt they had regained their dignity, which had always been denied to them. They saw themselves as part of society.They could even buy a car on installments or fly on a plane to visit distant relatives. All this irritated the middle class, because they saw their privilege eroded. Thus discrimination and hatred of them was born.

And by its 13th year, the Lula-Dilma government in Brazil had won world respectability. But the economic and financial crisis, being systemic, reached us, causing economic problems and unemployment that forced the government to take strong measures. The endemic corruption of Brazil intensified in Petrobras, implicating not only the upper strata of the PT, but also of the main political parties. A biased, self-righteous judge, focused his concerns almost exclusively on the PT. The mass media, especially the conservative wing, created a stereotype of the PT as synonymous with corruption. That is not true, because it equates the proper majority with a small corrupt segment. But the condemnable corruption served as pretext for the wealthy elites, and their historical allies, to plot a parliamentary coup, because they could have never won through elections.

Afraid that the policies favoring the poorest would be consolidated, the elites decided to liquidate them. The method they had used before against Getulio Vargas and Joao (“Jango”) Goulart, was invoked again now with the same pretext «of fighting corruption», in fact, to hide their own corruption. The golpistas used the Parliament, 60% of which is accused of crimes, and disrespected the 54 million who elected Dilma Rousseff.

It is important to be clear that behind this parliamentary coup are the mean spirited and antisocial interests of the power holders, allied with the press that twists the facts and was always associated with every coup, together with the conservative political parties, part of the Public Ministry and the Military Police (that replaces tanks) and a sector of the Supreme Court that, lacking dignity, is not impartial. The coup is not only against President Dilma Rousseff, but against the democracy of a participatory and social character. It is about going back to the most shameless neoliberalism, leaving almost everything to a marketplace that is always competitive and never cooperative (which is why it is conflictive and antisocial). To that end they decided to demolish the social policies, privatize health services, education and petroleum, and attack the social gains of the workers.

President Rousseff was not accused of a single crime. From administrative errors, also committed by previous governments, they imputed governmental irresponsibility which became the basis for impeachment. It is as if a President is condemned to death for a minor bicycle accident, a totally disproportionate punishment. Of the 81 senators who will judge her, more than 40 are implicated in, or under investigation for other crimes. They forced her to sit in the dock of the accused, where those who condemn her should be sitting. Among them are 5 former ministers.

The corruption is not only monetary. The worst is the corruption of their hearts and minds, filled of hatred. The minds of the pro impeachment senators are corrupt because they know they are condemning an innocent woman. But blindness and corporate interests prevail over the interests of all the people.

The Apostle Paul’s harsh sentence is appropriate here: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of the men who hold prisoner the truth (Romans 1,18). The heads of the golpistas will forever carry the sign of Cain, who murdered his brother Abel. The golpistas murdered democracy. Their memory will be damned for the crime they have committed. And the wrath of God will be upon them.

Leonardo Boff is ecotheologian and member of the Earthcharta Comission.

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.