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The intolerable

14 Thursday Apr 2016

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LaymertMG_2318

The intolerable

Faced with repeated attacks on democracy promoted by sectors that should watch over it – the judiciary and the MPF installments – in concert with conservative politicians and the media, Professor Laymert Garcia dos Santos asks: “We know that in Brazil there are not terrorists and we know who wins with the criminalization of the left. We know, therefore, who want destabilization. Therefore, in addition to the defense of an elected President and a former President hunted unjustly, is concerned the defense of democracy and sovereignty. Means: the construction of the future. Hence, the question: Let’s continue tolerating the intolerable? “.

The question was put on the text (below) written for theBrazilianObservatory and presented in the speech of the author (video at the end of the text) in the launching ceremony of the “Open Letter to the International Academic Community” (yesterday at the University of São Paulo), which also had the presence of Marilena Chaui, Marcio Sotelo Felippe, Alfredo Bosi, Ruy Fausto, Reginaldo Nasser and Heloisa Buarque de Almeida. Video with the intervention of these teachers will be published on this page. It will soon be available English version of the article below.

 

The Intolerable

Laymert Garcia dos Santos

Now that the government Temer died before he was born;

Now, we know that Lula process should not go back to Curitiba;

Now, the attorney Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima, spokesman Lava Jato, admitted that “[…] governments that are being investigated, the PT governments, […]” are the ones who come to the case;

Now that patents were all irregularities and illegalities committed by the Task Force of Curitiba since 2006, so from the earliest beginnings of Lava Jet officially triggered in 2014.

Now, workers, social movements, students, intellectuals and artists gave body and voice to the cry of “There will not be hit”, adding ever more intensely complement “Go fight”;

Now, that was already clear to God and the world, both here and out there, that democracy is in danger and that the state of exception is setting and revoking the rule of law, such great are the recurring violations of the Constitution of 88;

Now, the growing consensus “Outside Cunha”;

Now that even major media outlets seem to land the blow, although having it promoted and defended tooth and nail – not for the sake of legality, of course, but constatarem their theoretical and practical impossibility;

Now, that was cracked the sacrosanct image of vigilante Sergio Moro, revealing the figure of the despotic will;

Maybe it’s time to ask, do not have peace and we can return to our affairs, but that setup will take the strategy of destabilization of Brazil, from the point we arrived.

You have to bury once and for all the idea that the process was initiated one day or has the effective goal to end corruption. For an ultra-selective fight against corruption, which leaves out a multitude of thieves to cry freely and with impunity “Stop thief!” Pointing to Lula, Dilma and the PT can not be minimally taken seriously.

And if the judiciary – particularly the dome of the Federal Public Ministry – as well as sectors of the Federal Police, are only apparently fighting corruption, what they are doing?

Several indications, actions, statements strongly suggest that it is destabilizing the country at any price. Price, by the way, at this point, it is very high if we take into account 1) the commitment of key branches of the productive sector, particularly energy, infrastructure and defense, with reverberations throughout the economy; 2) the creation of an immense social crisis, with its procession of unemployed and the threat of regression in the most vulnerable part of the population to subhuman levels we thought definitely overcome; 3) last, but not least, the demoralization of the institutions, starting with a bandit Parliament, political parties venal and grotesques, judges and prosecutors enxovalham laws in the name of spurious values.

Who cares such destabilization planned and rigorously enforced? Surely, Sergio Moro and his attorneys are only operators of a crime against homeland; nor the federal police are more than performers. Of course, the coup media, opposition parties, fascist movements continuously stimulated, FIESP, the OAB, useful innocent and the opportunists, including the government hosts are actors involved in disaster production, each segment operating at their way. And it can be considered that, because of their immobility and lack of initiative, the government itself Dilma and PT contributed involuntarily, until recently, with destabilization.

The silence of the military is remarkable, even when important interests of defense, that affect them directly, are injured. But what does your non-leadership? If it is true that Lula was not kidnapped and taken by force to Curitiba because of discreet interference Aeronautical Police in Congonhas, there would be an indication that its role as guarantor of the established order follows intact?

It remains, then, the Judiciary dome. Excluding the known positions of Gilmar Mendes, who provide comments, it is disturbing to note that it is not known for sure which way the Supreme Court is going to move, with a view to issuing contradictory signals and the doubts raised as to predominant role of the court, if the Constitutional Court or Court of Appeal.

More serious still is the action and the words of Attorney General Rodrigo Janot.Tracking and mapping out the game unfold in different chess boards of the crisis, the journalist Luis Nassif realized clearly that the Federal Public Ministry was the “High Command” of the coup. The designation is extremely strong, but there are reasons for the use of the term. Among them, the unexplained visit Janot to the Department of Justice in Washington to lead the American authorities documents on Petrobras; his appetite to investigate Aécio Neves; his uncompromising defense of Moro and the Task Force Lava jet, despite the illegalities committed; his delay to report Cunha by the Supreme Court, giving this all the time for stirring up the House of Representatives against the Dilma government; and finally their permission for Live disclose illegal clips of President of talks with Lula, Minister Jacques Wagner with Rui Falcão and lawyers of the former president.

The mapping Nassif gives intelligibility to the destabilization and, above all, the role of the High Command. But over time, and the publication of posts, is the impression that the journalist was startled by his own discovery and went on to explain the conduct of Janot and prosecutors under the exclusive viewpoint of ” corporatism “. Thus, the Federal Public Ministry does not share the logic that moves the other scammers protagonists, as they would be more interested in the power struggle than in fighting corruption, obsession that the MPF supposedly wants to fulfill, “matter who gets hurt.”

We came back, so the crusade against corruption. But if it is selective and the entire Brazilian society is already paying a steep price for Lava jet makes sense to believe Janot? If we know who loses destabilization, would not ask who wins it? It is as if the logic of Lava Jato obey the strategy of absolute disqualification from Brazil on the global stage, under the BRICS, in the Mercosur and in the eyes of Brazilians; that is to say: to the country’s reduction strategy to a neocolonial condition. Destabilization seeks to impracticability of Brazil as a country. Moreover, the strategy does not seem to have been drawn here, in that it repeats and recovery methods, procedures and legal technologies, law enforcement and policies of the US state terrorism in their war against the countries “enemies”, especially those who hold sovereignty in terms of energy and, therefore, need to be “neutralized.” The strategy seeks to criminalize the government Dilma, Lula, the PT and all those who resist the implementation of neoliberal and neocolonial agenda equating them to “terrorists” that need to be eliminated from the political scene. The strategy follows the logic of land razed, preferably carried out by the indigenous themselves, without direct foreign intervention and without military interference. An undeclared war in the “gray area” where local vigilantes do the dirty work, handling the exception of state weapons and in line with the coup media, triggering informational pumps calculated impact on public opinion and on institutions.

Live and prosecutors Curitiba are the soldiers of destabilization. Janot and prosecutors in Brasilia are the High Command. They form the backbone of a political destruction device as a form of collective understanding. Trained in workshops and seminars by experts in “cooperation”, learned the new legal technologies, policies and police of “counter-terrorism”, imported and implemented the strategy of chaos. And we can not even claim that we were not warned: Snowden in 2013, had revealed the staples of the NSA against Dilma and against Petrobras; but we do not know if that espionage was found in the oil provided material for Lava jet. On the other hand Wikileaks informs that Live and prosecutors enthusiastically participated in, since in October 2009, a conference in Rio de Janeiro, which called for training to American Counter-Terrorism Coordination – multijuridicional training, practical, including demonstrations on how to preparing a witness to testify. In the words of the leaked document: “Future Training should focus on areas such as task force on financial crimes, which may prove the best way to fight terrorism in Brazil.”

We know that in Brazil there are not terrorists and we know who wins the criminalization of left. We know, therefore, who want destabilization. Therefore, in addition to the defense of an elected President and a former President hunted unjustly, is concerned the defense of democracy and sovereignty. Means: the construction of the future. Hence, the question: Let’s continue tolerating the intolerable?

(*) Laymert Garcia dos Santos is Titular Professor of the Department of Sociology at the University of Campinas – Unicamp

Brazil’s Summer of Discontent

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

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by VIJAY PRASHAD

Brazil’s modernist plazas have been filled with protesters over the course of the past week. They have come to ask for the resignation of the President — Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT). Crowds on Avenue Paulista in São Paulo held aloft a massive sign that read, “Impeachment já!” It is the slogan of this protest — if President Rousseff does not resign, then she should be impeached.

Why do these thousands of people want Ms. Rousseff to leave office? An eruption of corruption scandals that implicate the entire political elite comes at a time of Brazil’s economic stagnation. Brazil currently suffers its worst recession in half a century, with economic growth shrinking. Low commodity prices and slack demand from China are the main authors of this downturn. No relief is on the horizon, since China is not likely to expand its purchases. Nor, therefore, will commodity prices rise higher. Reliant upon both, an exit for Brazil’s crisis in that direction is closed. The PT, in power from 2002, had not been able to diversify the economy and so was vulnerable to commodity prices. Economist Alfredo Saad-Filho calls this a “confluence of dissatisfactions,” drawing in those with immediate worries — rising bus fares— and those with much greater anxieties — the loss of power of the dominant classes.

Angering the elite

What is striking about the protests against the Rousseff government is that these are not coming mainly from the slums — the favelas — of Brazil or from the industrial working class. In March last year, Brazil’s college educated, upper middle class went out onto the streets for a series of marches against the government. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, a former Finance Minister from the 1980s, characterised these protests as “collective hatred on the part of the elites, of the rich, against a party and a president.” What motivated the demonstrators, he said, was not worry, but “hatred.” What do the Brazilian elite hate about the government of the PT?

The PT has pushed a broad agenda to give capitalism a human face. Wretched poverty in parts of Brazil had to be ameliorated by a social welfare programme known as Bolsa Família. The World Bank said that this programme has “changed the lives of millions in Brazil.” For cash payments, Brazil’s impoverished families pledge to keep their children in school and take them for regular medical check-ups. The government argued that Bolsa Família would enhance the immediate lives of the poor — with the cash payments — and would break the cycle of intergenerational poverty — through education and health care.

Almost 50 million Brazilians — a quarter of the population — have benefited from Bolsa Família. Last year, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics announced that extreme poverty has been eradicated in the country. But, at that announcement, the institute pointed out that the budgetary cuts to the programme would reverse the trend. A third of the funds allocated to Bolsa Família had been removed from the 2016 budget. This is an indicator of the financial trials of the government.

What the elite hated was the rise in minimum wages, the expansion of rights to workers and the privileges now given to the working class for entry into public universities. Benefits to the working class in Brazil open up the social question of racial inequality. Brazil, a former slave state, has never really come to terms with the legacies of slavery and racism. Under the PT, issues of racial discrimination and the costs of racism on the workers became part of the national conversation. This was anathema to the elite.

Habits of coups

Over the course of the past century, at regular intervals, populist political movements have come to the fore in Brazil to challenge the iron grip of the elite. Each time, the people rally behind these leaders, the elite — with the assistance of the military and the United States — has undermined the revolt of the favelas and the countryside. Presidents Getúlio Vargas and João Goulart became standard-bearers of this popular frustration, but both had to be removed — Vargas by suicide in 1954 and Goulart by military coup in 1964. In both cases, the combination of the established dominant classes, the military and the U.S. created a crisis that overwhelmed the country and dispatched the populist leaders. Fear that this is part of the equation in Brazil today is not unfounded. It is etched into Brazil’s history.

Coups need not come from the barracks any longer. The media is sufficient. In Brazil, the Globo network — 50 years old — now controls more than half of the media — television networks and influential newspapers — including O Globo. “There is no other means of communication with similar influence in the country,” Professor Beatriz Bissio of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro tells me. The owner of the network, Dr. Roberto Marinho, has a very close alliance with the military regime. His channels have been fulminating against the Rousseff government, urging on the protests in the service not of anti-corruption but against the PT.

Issue of corruption

In Brazil, a familiar refrain is “the system is not corrupt; corruption is the system.” Systematic corruption has eaten into wide swathes of Brazil’s politicians, not only from among the prominent leaders of the PT but also of its opposition, including Aécio Neves who ran for president against Ms. Rousseff in 2014. Vast profits in the major government utilities, Eletrobras and Petrobras, provided opportunities to politicians for bribes. Politicians from PT did not resist the temptation. But they are not alone.

The media went after the PT as if it was the only one which was complicit in the corruption scandals. They ignored the corruption scandals of the right-wing opposition. Datafolha has done regular surveys of dissatisfaction in Brazil. Over a third of the population finds that corruption is their major grouse, although the rest of those surveyed complained about a lack of access to health care and education as well as jobs. The media is not interested in these complaints. They come to the heart of the PT programme. Much easier to poke a finger at “corruption,” an idea with an emotional appeal to people whose livelihood weakens as they see the elite becoming immune from the crisis.

The Lula factor

Ms. Rousseff, unlike Mr. Lula, did not cultivate a close link with the people. Compelled to make budgetary changes, she did not reach out to the public to explain the problems. Attacked by the media, Ms. Rousseff isolated herself from her supporters. Confusion led to disillusionment. Mr. Lula, from the factory, and Ms. Rousseff, from the prison, developed a party — the PT — that grew from Brazil’s powerful social movements, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST). Ms. Rousseff reached out to Mr. Lula to revive connections to the social movements. He is temperamentally of the trade unions, a salty man with popularity among the working class and peasantry.

But Mr. Lula had been under investigation as part of the Petrolão (Car Wash) scandal — money laundering around Petrobras. His role here is small scale compared to the other outrages. The detention of Mr. Lula and the release of taped phone conversations between him and Ms. Rousseff suggest a wider conspiracy at work here. It is in the habit of Brazil’s elite to foment such discord to prevent any threat to its stability. Mr. Lula’s return in a time of economic crisis might have signalled a sharp left turn from the PT. It had no other choice but to move in that direction. It would be suicidal for the PT to become the party of austerity. Mr. Lula’s brief was to help Ms. Rousseff change course. This is what the elite found abominable. Ms. Rousseff’s offer of a cabinet post to Mr. Lula would have immunised him from prosecution. A judge has now blocked the appointment.

On Friday, a million people joined the Popular Front of Brazil to repeat Mr. Lula’s call — não vai ter golpe, there’ll be no coup. The people, as the MST put it, went to the streets to defend democracy. This protest stands against the coup. Whether the emergence of these popular protests will change the ugly dynamic in Brazil is to be seen. Much is at stake in this important South American country.

This article originally appeared in The Hindu 

Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

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It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning

Alfredo Saad Filho

Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.

Supporters of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva confront police

Supporters of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva confront police officers in front of Lula’s apartment in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, 4 March 2016.

Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was reelected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a majority of 3.5 million votes.

Dilma’s second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and U.S.-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers’ Party) was bad news for the opposition, because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silvacould return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010, and when he left office his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazil’s history. This likely sequence suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. The opposition immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.

Booming Economy

Dilma inherited from Lula a booming economy. Alongside China and other middle-income countries, Brazil bounced back vigorously after the global crisis. GDP expanded by 7.5 per cent in 2010, the fastest rate in decades, and Lula’s hybrid neoliberal-neodevelopmental economic policies seemed to have hit the perfect balance: sufficiently orthodox to enjoy the confidence of large sections of the internal bourgeoisie, and heterodox enough to deliver the greatest redistribution of income and privilege in Brazil’s recorded history, thereby securing the support of the formal and informal working class. For example, the minimum wage rose by 70 per cent and 21 million (mostly low-paid) jobs were created in the 2000s. Social provision increased significantly, including the world-famousBolsa Família conditional cash transfer programme, and the government supported a dramatic expansion of higher education, including quotas for blacks and state school pupils. For the first time, the poor could access education as well as income and bank loans. They proceeded to study, earn and borrow, and to occupy spaces previously monopolized by the upper middle class: airports, shopping malls, banks, private health facilities and roads, that were clogged up by cheap cars purchased in 72 easy payments. The government coalition enjoyed a comfortable majority in a highly fragmented Congress, and Lula’s legendary political skills managed to keep most of the political elite on side.

Then everything started to go wrong. Dilma Rousseff was chosen by Lula as his successor. She was a steady pair of hands and a competent manager and enforcer. She was also the most left-wing President of Brazil since João Goulart, who was overthrown by a military coup in 1964. However, she had no political track record and, it would later become evident, lacked essential qualities for the job.

Once elected, Dilma shifted economic policies further away from neoliberalism. The government intervened in several sectors seeking to promote investment and output, and put intense pressure on the financial system to reduce interest rates, which lowered credit costs and the government’s debt service, releasing funds for consumption and investment. A virtuous circle of growth and distribution seemed possible. Unfortunately, the government miscalculated the lasting impact of the global crisis. The U.S. and European economies stagnated, China’s growth faltered, and the so-called commodity supercycle vanished. Brazil’s current account was ruined. Even worse, the U.S., UK, Japan and the Eurozone introduced quantitative easing policies that led to massive capital outflows toward the middle income countries. Brazil faced a tsunami of foreign exchange, that overvalued the currency and bred deindustrialization. Economic growth rates fell precipitously.

The government doubled its interventionist bets through public investment, subsidised loans and tax rebates, which ravaged the public accounts. Their frantic and seemingly random interventionism scared away the internal bourgeoisie: the local magnates were content to run government through the Workers’ Party, but would not be managed by a former political prisoner who overtly despised them. And she despised not only the capitalists: the President had little inclination to speak to social movements, left organizations, lobbies, allied parties, elected politicians, or her own ministers. The economy stalled and Dilma’s political alliances shrank, in a fast-moving dance of destruction. The neoliberal opposition scented blood.

The Opposition

For years, the opposition to the PT had been rudderless. The PSDB had nothing appealing to offer while, as is traditional in Brazil, most mainstream parties were gangs of bandits extorting the government for selfish gain. The situation was so desperate that the mainstream media overtly (!) took the mantle of opposition, and started driving the anti-PT agenda, literally instructing the politicians on what to do next. In the meantime, the radical left remained small and relatively powerless. It was despised by the hegemonic ambitions of the PT.

The confluence of dissatisfactions became an irresistible force in 2013. The mainstream media is rabidly neoliberal and utterly ruthless: as the equivalent would be if Fox News and its clones dominated the entire U.S. media, including all TV chains and the main newspapers. The upper middle class was their obliging target, as they had economic, social and political reasons to be unhappy. Upper middle class jobs were declining, with 4.3 million posts paying between 5 and 10 minimum wages vanishing in the 2000s. In the meantime, the bourgeoisie was doing well, and the poor advanced fast: even domestic servants got labour rights. The upper middle class felt both squeezed and excluded from their privileged spaces, as was explained above. It was also dislocated from the state. Since Lula’s election, the state bureaucracy had been populated by thousands of cadres appointed by the PT and the left, to the detriment of ‘better educated’, whiter and, presumably, more deserving upper middle class competitors. Mass demonstrations erupted for the first time in June 2013, triggered by left-wing opposition against a bus fare increase in São Paulo. Those demonstrations were fanned by the media and captured by the upper middle-class and the right, and they shook the government – but, clearly, not enough to motivate them to save themselves. The demonstrations returned two years later. And then in 2016.

Now, reader, follow this. After the decimation of the state apparatus by the pre-Lula neoliberal administrations, the PT sought to rebuild selected areas of the bureaucracy. Among them, for reasons that Lula may soon have plenty of time to review, the Federal Police and the Federal Prosecution Office (FPO). In addition, for overtly ‘democratic’ reasons, but more likely related to corporatism and capacity to make media-friendly noise, the Federal Police and the FPO were granted inordinate autonomy; the former through mismanagement, while the latter has become the fourth power in the Republic, separately – and checking – the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The abundance of qualified jobseekers led to the colonization of these well-paying jobs by upper middle class cadres. They were now in a Constitutionally secure position, and could chew up the hand that that fed them, while loudly demanding, through the media, additional resources to maul the rest of the PT’s body.

Corruption was the ideal pretext. Since it lost the first democratic presidential elections, in 1989, the PT moved steadily toward the political centre. In order to lure the upper middle class and the internal bourgeoisie, the PT neutralized or expelled the party’s left wing, disarmed the trade unions and social movements, signed up to the neoliberal economic policies pursued by the previous administration, and imposed a dour conformity that killed off any alternative leadership. Only Lula’s sun can shine in the party; everyone else was incinerated. This strategy was eventually successful and, in 2002, ‘Little Lula Peace and Love’ was elected President. (I kid you not, reader: this was one of his campaign slogans.)

For years the PT had thrived in opposition as the only honest political party in Brazil. This strategy worked, but it contained a lethal contradiction: in order to win expensive elections, manage the Executive and build a workable majority in Congress, the PT would haveto get its hands dirty. There is no other way to ‘do’ politics in Brazilian democracy.

We only need one more element, and our mixture will be ready to combust. Petrobras is Brazil’s largest corporation and one of the world’s largest oil companies. The firm has considerable technical and economic capacity, and it was responsible for the discovery, in 2006, of gigantic ‘pre-salt’ deep sea oilfields hundreds of miles from the Brazilian coast. Dilma Rousseff, as Lula’s Minister of Mines and Energy, was responsible for imposing exploration contracts in these areas including large privileges for Petrobras. This legislation was vigorously opposed by PSDB, the media, the oil majors and the U.S. government.

The Investigation

In 2014, Sergio Moro, a previously unknown judge in Curitiba, a Southern state capital, started investigating a currency dealer suspected of tax evasion. This case eventually spiralled into a deathly threat against Dilma Rousseff’s government. Judge Moro is good-looking, well-educated, white and well paid. He is also very close to the PSDB. His Lavajato (Carwash) operation unveiled an extraordinary tale of large-scale bribery, plunder of public assets and funding for all major political parties, centred on the relationship between Petrobras and some of its main suppliers – precisely the stalwarts of the PT in the oil, shipbuilding and construction industries. It was the perfect combination, at the right time. Judge Moro’s cause was picked up by the media, and he obligingly steered it to inflict maximum damage to the PT, while shielding the other parties. Politicians connected to the PT and some of Brazil’s wealthiest businessmen were jailed summarily, and would remain locked up until they agreed a plea bargain implicating others. A new phase ofLavajato would ensnare them, and so on. The operation is now in its 25th phase; many have already collaborated, and those who refused to do so have received long prison sentences, to coerce them back into line while their appeals are pending. The media turned Judge Moro into a hero; he can do no wrong, and attempts to contest his sprawling powers are met with derision or worse. He is now the most powerful person in the Republic, above Dilma, Lula, the speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate (both sinking in corruption and other scandals), and the Ministers of the Supreme Court, which have either been silenced or quietly support Moro’s crusade.

Petrobras has been paralyzed by the scandal, bringing down the entire oil chain. Private investment has collapsed because of political uncertainty and an investment strike against Dilma’s government. Congress has turned against the government, and the Judiciary is overwhelmingly hostile. After years of sniping, the media has been delighted to see Lula fall under the Lavajato juggernaut, even if the allegations seem stretched: does he actually own a beach-side apartment which his family does not use, is that small farm really his, who paid for the lake and the mobile phone masts nearby, and how about those pedalos? No matter: Moro detained Lula for questioning on 4 March. He was taken to São Paulo airport and would have been flown to Curitiba, but the Judge’s plan was halted by fear of the political fallout. Lula was questioned at the airport, then released. He was livid.

In order to shore up her crumbling administration and protect Lula from prosecution, Dilma Rousseff appointed Lula her Chief of Staff (the President’s Chief of Staff has ministerial status and can be prosecuted only by the Supreme Court). The right-wing conspiracy went into overdrive. Moro (illegally) released the (illegal) recording of a conversation between President Dilma and Lula, pertaining to his investiture. Once suitably misinterpreted, their dialogue was presented as ‘proof’ of a conspiracy to protect Lula from Moro’s canine determination to jail him. Large right-wing upper middle class masses poured into the streets, furiously, on 13 March. Five days later, the left responded with large – but not quite as large – demonstrations of its own against the unfolding coup. In the meantime, Lula’s appointment was suspended by a judicial measure, then restored, then suspended again. The case is now in the Supreme Court. At the moment, he is not a Minister, and his head is well-positioned on the block. Moro can arrest him at short notice.

The Coup

Why is this a coup? Because despite aggressive scrutiny, no Presidential crime warranting an impeachment has emerged. Nevertheless, the political right has thrown the kitchen sink at Dilma Rousseff. They rejected the outcome of the 2014 elections and appealed against her alleged campaign finance violations, which would remove from power both Dilma and the Vice-President – now, chief conspirator – Michel Temer (strangely enough, his case has been parked). The right simultaneously started impeachment procedures in Congress. The media has attacked the government viciously for years, the neoliberal economists plead for a new administration to ‘restore market confidence’, and the right will resort to street violence if it becomes necessary. Finally, the judicial charade against the PT has broken all the rules of legality, yet it is cheered on by the media, the right and even by Supreme Court Justices.

Yet… the coup de grâce is taking a long time coming. In the olden days, the military would have already moved in. Today, the Brazilian military are defined more by their nationalism (a danger to the neoliberal onslaught) than by their right-wing faith and, anyway, the Soviet Union is no more. Under neoliberalism, coups d’état must follow legal niceties, as was shown in Honduras, in 2009, and in Paraguay, in 2012.

Brazil is likely to join their company, but not just now: large sections of capital want to restore the hegemony of neoliberalism; those who once supported the PT’s national development strategy have fallen into line; the media is howling so loudly it has become impossible to think clearly, and most of the upper middle class has descended into a fascist hatred for the PT, the left, the poor, and the black. Their disorderly hatred has become so intense that even PSDB politicians are booed in anti-government demonstrations. And, despite the relentless attack, the left remains reasonably strong, as was demonstrated on 18th March. The right and the elite are powerful and ruthless – but they are also afraid of the consequences of their own daring.

There is no simple resolution to the political, economic and social crises in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff has lost political support and the confidence of capital, and she is likely to be removed from office in the coming days. However, attempts to imprison Lula could have unpredictable implications and, even if Dilma and Lula are struck off the political map, a renewed neoliberal hegemony cannot automatically restore political stability or economic growth, or secure the social prominence that the upper middle class craves. Despite strong media support for the impending coup, the PT, other left parties and many radical social movements remain strong. Further escalation is inevitable. Watch this space. •

Alfredo Saad Filho is Professor of Political Economy at the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the political economy of neoliberalism, industrial policy, alternative macroeconomic policies, and the labour theory of value and its applications.