Brazil: First election shift. The limits of the broad front to defeat the Bolsonarista extreme right
ByVeronica O'Kelly, Socialist Alternative-PSOL / LIS, Brazil.
In the elections of 2 October Lula wins, but can't get over 50% plus one and there is the definition for a 2nd turn where you can win. Bolsonaro, after four years of a war government against the working people and the poor people, losing social base and being isolated by the national and international big bourgeoisie, mainly as a response to its policy of death adopted in the pandemic and environmental depredation, get a 43%. None of this was enough to convince the electorate that they voted for the current president, demonstrating the rejection that still exists in an important part of the Brazilian masses against the PT, Lula and this project that he has governed for 14 years at the service of banks, agribusiness and national and multinational companies. This, coupled with the demoralization that the Tucan neo-liberal right tried to provoke against the PT by allying itself with the extreme right in Dilma's institutional coup. After they've done what they did, they had a lousy electoral vote, leaving the clearest avenue for the extreme right. Today the first-order task is to defeat Bolsonaro in the streets and at the polls. Some notes to contribute to the debate in the revolutionary left.
The bank program, agribusiness and corporations do not serve to defeat the extreme right
We are witnessing an electoral campaign with a left blocked in the mass media and with little visibility in front of the masses, to the point of being ridiculous having to see and listen to the mdbista candidate, and agribusiness entrepreneur, Simone Tebet raising flags in defense of women's rights. feminists, the antifascists, the ecosocialists, the indigenous had their voice weakened in the megaphone of the bourgeois elections and this means a danger for the construction and strengthening of our struggles.
But what we did see and hear a lot in this election campaign was the usual government program, the capitalist bourgeoisie that is causing hunger, environmental destruction, misery, death and wars all over the planet, and that in Brazil it is expressed in a way that is increasingly unbearable for the exploited majorities.
Today this pre-election thesis has been confirmed in every way.The Broad Front is not useful to defeat the extreme right of Bolsonar, and that on the contrary the effect it provokes, sooner or later, is its strengthening, if this is accompanied by the disappearance or weakening of the socialist and classist left as a mass political alternative.
It is a fundamental task to defeat Bolsonaro. Preventing him from winning the elections and remaining in government is a first-order task. Its existence and survival as a project of political power, either in the presidency or in the majority of the legislative chambers, as it has become now after these elections, represents a danger to combat. Becausewe call to vote critically for Lula and we call on the classist left to unite and defend an anti-capitalist program in this campaign, calling to occupy the streets as we did in 2018 with the massive mobilizations of Ele Não, or in 2021 with the great acts Fora Bolsonaro. Only by strengthening a pole of the socialist and anti-capitalist left will we be able to defeat the extreme right once and for all in Brazil and in the world..
Lula, the PT and the masses
An important element that we must discuss, to approach a better political characterization with its consequent orientation, is that the political project that emerged from within the ABC Paulista, of the workers struggles of the years 70 Y 80, and who ruled for 14 years, no longer has the same influence on the Brazilian masses as in those days. Even more, they capitalize on a great rejection as a product of the disappointment provoked in the working class, popular sectors and a vanguard of the left that believed and trusted in a project that over the years has degenerated and has been assimilated to capitalism, with all its ills.
This disillusionment of the masses is still present in Brazil, to the point where almost 50% of the population still believes that Lula, Dilma and the PT are responsible for the poor living conditions experienced by the majority in the country. But, as adaptation is irreversible, Lula insists on campaigning defending an abstract democracy and a good past, without being able to say clearly how it is going to solve the problem of unemployment, the House, the misery and hunger suffered by the people. This, why, if he tells the truth, you have to explain that your program first of all this is more adjustment, counter-reforms and attacks on the working class to respond to the interests of their true allies, the capitalists who hold economic power and direct the political courses of the governments that decide not to cross their limits.
Democracy for whom??
It is nothing new to say that for those who suffer from the exploitation and oppression of this system of capitalist domination, the institutions have demonstrated their commitment to the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, and the maintenance of its power in the State. This is how justice and judges, the Parlament, government, the politicians, and even the presidential figure, have been losing credibility in broad sectors.
Bolsonaro expresses a policy of liquidation of democratic and social achievements. His militaristic character, militiaman, repressive, xenophobic, misogynist, racist and attacking the working class and its conquests, is the mark of his government and political project. From this place it is presented against the institutions, taking advantage of the discredit they have, installing an "anti-system" discourse and proposing a more repressive regime as an alternative, less democratic, of white and Christian supremacy and that guarantees the power of a bourgeois minority in power.
The Lula-Alckmin campaign, focused its propaganda and electoral agitation on the defense of democracy and all institutions, uncritically of course. The class limitations of the broad front, they gave for that. It is obvious that bourgeois politicians like Alckmin, who has already been governor of the state of São Paulo twice, the largest in all of Brazil with almost 50 million inhabitants and national economic center, who has directed and provoked massacres in the outskirts and occupations, like Pinheirinho, repressed public workers to approve the loss of labor rights, attacked social rights and promoted the privatization of public health and education, among many other measures and policies of a neoliberal and anti-popular nature, they will defend the institutions without a single point of criticism.
The best democracy is the one that expresses the will of the exploited and oppressed majorities, the one that gives voice to those who have no voice. The one that appears in the street when we fight against the adjustments or the attacks, the one that appears in each factory, neighborhood or university, when the mobilization. Thats why we, along with other organizations, we form the People's Coordinator on the Street, we build the mobilization and insist that it is in the struggle that we will defeat Bolsonaro and his project, without confidence in the polls and in the institutions, it is with the struggle that we will defend our democratic gains and from this struggle, we will build real democracy.
The PSOL and the Left Front that was not, missed the appointment
Before the elections, the radical left of the PSOL, of which we are part, gave a political battle for his own candidacy. This battle was based on the political characterization that, before the polarization between two bourgeois projects (one from the far right and one from the center), it was necessary to present a candidacy for the presidency to vocalize a program of defense of the conquests and solutions to the problems suffered by the working class and the popular sectors, and thus polarize (truly) with the Bolsonaro project.
Refusal to present their own candidacy for the presidency and the government in a large part of the States of the Federation, made the left weaken in the electoral political debate. PSOL, it was the only left-wing party with the ability to participate in presidential debates in the media and use advertising on TV and radio, in addition to having received a millionaire Electoral Fund. All this capital could have been placed at the service of making a leftist political alternative visible to the masses, but the majority leadership refused. This is already a mistake, but it gets worse with the existence of Bolsonaro.
The example of the Portuguese elections in January this year is graphic and allows us to understand this dynamic. The «Gift» (alliance between the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Portugal, the Greens and the Left Bloc) that guaranteed the government of the Socialist Party in the previous period, laundering its program and adapting to social democracy, was dissolved in the last elections and the result was that the PS obtained an absolute majority in parliament, growing substantially, while the other parties fell back, they lost votes and parliamentary representation. Even worse, all this is accompanied by the great growth of Chega's extreme right! what happened from 1 a 12 MPs.
At the other extreme is sectarianism and the self-proclamation of the left, that was divided. The Socialist and Revolutionary Pole (led by the PSTU), UP and the PCB refused to form a Left Front to dispute a sector that, although it was difficult to capture due to the disparity in the distribution of the Electoral Fund and the lack of space in the electoral propaganda on TV and radio, surely it would have been disputed with greater force than it had, with a lowercase left, divided and fringe.
Definitely, they missed the appointment and this becomes a task to solve, a challenge for the next period, that regardless of the government that emerges from these elections, the socialist left will have the responsibility to build a unitary left alternative in the country.
Vote 13, take to the streets and build a revolutionary party
We enter the 2nd round of the elections with the main task of removing Bolsonaro from the presidency. We call to defeat this government and its far-right project with the struggle of the working class and poor people.. We call to vote 13 and to defend, along with the classist left, a program in favor of 99%. and we say, very clearly, that without building a separate tool, working class, with a socialist program, an internationalist and revolutionary perspective, the extreme right and all the projects that seek to attack our achievements, they won't go away. And that, far from it, will be reinforced by the absence of a completely opposite project of society, a society in which the workers govern and set up a socialist system. That is why we militate and we invite you to do it with us and we.
