Brazil: On the new Lula-Alckmin government, first observations

ByLiaison Committee – Socialist Alternative and Socialist Struggle/PSOL – LIS in Brazil

In a historic inauguration, Lula received the presidential sash from a group of people represented by a black woman and recycler., one of the country's greatest indigenous leaders, a black child and inhabitant of the periphery, a teacher, a cook, a defender of the fight against ableism, a metallurgist and a craftsman. A symbolic act never seen in the entire history of the Brazilian republic. With the presence of thousands of people from different parts of the country, superior to the taking possession of 2003, Lula-Alckmin began their government accompanied by the international press and delegations from numerous countries present.. We bring you the first general observations about the new Government:

1. The end of the Bolsonaro government represents an immense relief for the majorities after four years of intense attacks and deaths of thousands of people. Lula's electoral victory and inauguration on 1 January of this year, symbolizes the popular response against the political project of Bolsonaro's extreme right. Regrettably, Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism are not yet a turned page, nor has the former president been forcibly taken from the streets and imprisoned, nor has its movement ceased to exist. Conversely, have concluded with the long-awaited promise that they will make a rabid opposition to the incoming Government. The main Bolsonaro leaders, including former vice president, They have assumed positions in Parliament and in state executives.

2. The motto "Union and Reconstruction" of the Lula-Alckmin government is symbolic so that we understand the proposal of the new government. There is an ongoing debate about whether the Government is a "Popular Front Government" (classical or singular), as was the first PT cycle, or a "normal bourgeois government". There are still characterizations of "Government of National Reconstruction" and "Government of National Unity". All this debate will continue. Thus, There is no doubt that the nature of class conciliation, the attempt to reconcile capital and labor is the central hallmark. But that in itself does not answer everything..

3. There are central features of the "Popular Front" in the government that are important to understand: the support of workers' organizations and conciliatory social movements; the illusion that the popular layers, although polarized in recent years, feed in the government. They are important elements of form and consciousness that we cannot ignore.. At the same time, The new government has the content of demobilizing the working class and instrumentalizing it for the paths of the Redemocratization Regime. This content can only be revealed through concrete experience. It is up to the revolutionary left to act to try to accelerate this process without falling into sectarianism., disregarding the form, nor in opportunism, deleting the content.

4. There are two important phenomena that are going to collide in this new government, very different from what it was at the beginning of the PT cycle in 2003. One is the aforementioned, some characteristics of a «Popular Front»; The other is that of the extreme right with strength in the opposition - although momentarily reduced by the loss of the federal government machinery.. Opportunism throws organizations into the arms of the Lula-Alckmin government for fear of mobilizing and confronting Bolsonarism in the streets; sectarianism makes a stylistic differentiation of the two phenomena but, in practice, put everything in the same bag. Both of them, when and if the moment demands it, they can be disastrous.

5. The illusion about the "left wing" in the Lula-Alckmin government, or even that the government is an "empty shell" to occupy, It is serving as pressure for a part of the left to occupy the space "before the right occupies it". This pressure has been expressed, for example, by PSOL, showing loyalty to the new government and being ashamed to even pronounce the word "independence". The tendency is that this first term of Lula-Alckmin will pressure the main organizations towards immobility and to adhere to the policy of patience with the new government..

6. The ministerial composition, a total of 37, shows the political streak of reconciliation of the PT-Lula with the main parties representing capital, the physiological centers, social democracy, green capitalism and labor – União Brasil (merger of the DEM with the PSL, former Bolsonaro party), PSD, MDB, PSB, REDE y PDT. Two left-wing parties join them, the PCdoB and the PSOL. This seam is part of the composition of the list for the elections, of the agreements for victory in the second electoral round and the acceptance of the transition process operated in the last months of the Bolsonaro government until the beginning of the current government and, the most important thing, the acceptance of governability under the rules of the bourgeoisie and its Regime.

7. The first measures of the new government were progressive, like the 600 real for the poorest families; the withdrawal of Petrobras, Mail, EBC, DataPrev and other state sectors of the privatization process; the review of the administrative secrecy imposed by Bolsonaro; the decrees to combat deforestation and against mining on indigenous lands and environmental protection. But there are much deeper ones, like the counter-reforms approved in recent years (of retirements, labor, secondary education, spending ceiling, anti-terrorism law, among other), privatizations and the dismantling of the public sector that must be revoked as soon as possible.

8. As immediate tasks to conquer, We believe that it is necessary to prepare the salary campaigns of the categories in this first semester; demand the restitution of the inflation of the last 4 years and the real readjustment of the 5%; in the same way, demand the freezing of basic basket products and electricity rates, Water, sewers, gas, telephone, internet, IPTU and rentals; Zero fares for public transport; creation of work fronts to absorb unemployed young people; immediate payment of the minimum wage to teachers and nurses; direct elections of career civil servants to end the distribution of positions in federal public offices.

9. It is necessary to make Lula's speech "dictatorship no more", "democracy forever" becomes concrete democracy, not only in a gimmicky phrase. Concrete democracy means rights for the majority of the people, for the working class. For it, we have to face the millionaires and billionaires, We must say no to the rules of the tax regime – that is why it is important to repeal the spending ceiling, as well as the infamous fiscal responsibility law. Following the rules of the regime, this will have very little margin. The only possibility will be through social pressure, which was demonstrated at the inauguration with the cries of "Amnesty is not!» to Bolsonaro. The popular base itself has made it evident that it wants and needs concrete changes.

10. The PSOL has an important task in this period that begins. Maintain without hesitation your political independence, mobilize against the Bolsonaro extreme right, anti-bolsonarism continues to be the order of the day, and be part of the mobilization of the working class for the annulment of the attacks, the conquest of new rights and the defense of those that we still have left, against the coming attacks. By official means it is accepting the governability of the Regime and the dictates of the capitalist vultures of the market, on the street is to impose our policy.

11. The national and international situation places a fundamental task as a priority for the working class, the construction of an anti-capitalist tool, revolutionary and internationalist. We live in a stage in which the capitalist system and its governments (in its various forms) They constantly attack the towns, opening processes of socially polarized confrontations. In these processes, reformist organizations, not revolutionary, are put to the test, or they become radicalized and break with any illusion of class conciliation, or fall victims of adaptation and assimilation to the bourgeois democratic regime. Hence the urgency of strengthening the revolutionary tool, the revolutionary party. To turn around.

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