Cristovam Buarque: the traitor of education

Senator Cristovam Buarque (PPS-DF) published an article in Correio Braziliense last Tuesday (May 22nd) entitled "Same Commitments" to try to justify to the voters of Brasília his political choice to launch Izalci Lucas (PSDB) for the government of the Federal District.

Cristovam is trying to justify the unjustifiable and create a semantic trap to deceive voters: he wants to sell the idea that even by allying himself with the obscurantist forces responsible for the democratic rupture and the seizure of central power in the Republic, he remains committed to the same principles of a progressive parliamentarian. Pure diversionary tactic!

This is because the senator is currently in a political limbo, where he is viewed with no confidence by either the forces of backwardness or the progressive camp, the latter being the biggest critic of his political and parliamentary performance.

The problem is that Cristovam has little room left to engage in this kind of fallacious, not to mention intellectually dishonest, manipulation, because the facts speak for themselves.

Ever since he voted in favor of the impeachment without a crime of responsibility that removed Dilma Rousseff from the Presidential Palace, he has been on a growing and irreversible slide towards the arms of rent-seeking and fundamentalism.

In his article, the senator presents himself as a champion of morality and ethics. He has the audacity to claim that the "ethical purity of the red bloc has been tarnished," as if he could make such a statement and emerge unscathed, even after forging an alliance with the PSDB, one of the most corrupt parties in Brazil.

When it comes to "ethical purity," Cristovam's pre-candidate for the Palácio do Buriti doesn't stand a chance. Izalci has a substantial list of accusations against him, ranging from the invasion of public areas in the Federal District to being a defendant in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) for committing crimes against electoral faith and ideological falsehood.

Furthermore, what moral authority does Cristovam have to speak from this position after placing a criminal gang in the Presidential Palace and launching a candidate who is a support base for Michel Temer, who twice voted to prevent investigations into the first president in history to be accused by the Attorney General's Office of committing common crimes while in office?

But the absurdities of the "no" don't stop there. Cristovam says that "the loss of substance of the red bloc" occurred because it lacked the capacity to make the structural reforms that the people need, especially in education.

Obviously, he believes that such structural reforms were made by Temer's illegitimate government, whose most symbolic act is the approval of Constitutional Amendment 95, which froze spending on public policies for the next 20 years, leaving all financial expenses unchanged.

Although he voted in favor of that amendment, Cristovam insists on the slogan of "senator defender of education." It's difficult to convince anyone of that, since Constitutional Amendment 95 has become the biggest nightmare for Brazilian public education, the cause of the very serious financial crisis affecting public universities and federal institutes.

By embracing his pre-candidate, the former rector of the University of Brasília seems truly willing to bury the ideals that gave rise to his public life. This is because Izalci, former owner of a private school in the Federal District, is recognized as a staunch defender of private interests in education, to the detriment of a public, free, and quality model.

It is worth remembering that Cristovam, who champions the federalization of basic education with the goal of "the federal government adopting the children, maintaining the schools, and paying the minimum wage for teachers," wants to become governor the defender of the controversial education voucher project. This project allows public school students with good grades to enroll in private schools with discounts.

In the name of electoral expediency, Cristovam abandoned his own convictions to support Izalci, author of the "School Without Political Parties" project, despite the senator having repeatedly expressed his opposition to the matter. He even went so far as to call the project "School with Censorship" when he presented a report rejecting a similar proposal in the Federal Senate.

Therefore, it is evident that there is a chasm between the senator's discourse and his actions, and that contradiction has been the keynote of his political choices.

A staunch opponent of the educational policies adopted by the democratic and popular governments of Lula and Dilma, Cristovam will be responsible for formulating Geraldo Alckmin's (PSDB) government program for education.

Out of spite and dishonesty, Cristovam disregards the silent revolution that the Lula and Dilma governments produced in Brazilian education, the only historical period in which the sector was considered a strategic public policy for social, economic, human and civic development in this country.

Numerous advances were made during this period, most notably the quotas in universities, which guaranteed unprecedented access to academia for the poorest segment of the population, including Black people, Indigenous people, and quilombola communities—a policy that is threatened by the brutal budget cuts imposed by the illegitimate government on assistance and student support policies.

While Temer and PSDB are dismantling public education with the intention of privatizing it, the public funding model from the Lula and Dilma era ensured real growth in the education budget of 206%, after discounting inflation.

Furthermore, it was President Dilma's government that approved a law allocating 75% of oil royalties and the Pre-Salt Social Fund to education, the most important source of financing for the sector in the medium and long term. With Petrobras' withdrawal from the Pre-Salt, a project authored by José Serra of the PSDB party, it is estimated that the Social Fund accumulated losses of approximately R$ 50 billion.

Cristovam may not recognize these advances, but he is fully aware that Constitutional Amendment 95 is largely responsible for dismantling the funding model experienced during the Lula and Dilma governments and the greatest threat to the virtuous cycle of expansion, access, and quality of Brazilian education.

With a healthy dose of cynicism, Cristovam tries to defend his position by saying that, "today, being on the 'right side' means being with those who, regardless of party affiliation, defend ethics in the exercise of power, and put the interests of the people and the public ahead of the interests of businessmen, deputies and senators, parties and unions."

It is truly sad to see the end of those who believe that the "right side" of history is that of those who usurped democracy and rights and continue their relentless march of regression.