Dilma is already a step ahead of Lula's Workers' Party.

History is often ironic. Yet another proof of this is that, despite harsh criticism even from her own PT (Workers' Party) peers, Dilma Rousseff may be the path through which the PT itself can recover as a party, at least in part. With all the crisis that has led Brazil to one of the darkest phases of its history, Dilma has been the protagonist of an extremely interesting phenomenon in recent weeks: her popularity is visibly growing. More than that: she is surpassing a level of popularity that few (or no one) expected she could achieve.

Dilma deserves some of the well-known criticisms, such as the centralizing nature of her governments and the mediocrity of her ministers, with some exceptions, as well as having handed over some of her ministries to right-wing figures – and Gilberto Kassab is the prime example. But I have viewed differently the criticism about her inability to "do politics," which, while valid to a certain extent, should be put into perspective. Would it be incompetence to "not know how to negotiate" with a generation of politicians and a Congress that are the very embodiment of corruption and right-wing ideology?

Dilma herself questioned this criticism, which is made against her daily (and which I myself have already made), in the interview with Luis Nassif on Monday the 13th (read here"I was blamed for not wanting to negotiate. But there's no possible negotiation with certain types of practices," he said, referring to Eduardo Cunha and his gang.

This "problem" or "flaw" of Dilma's is, rather, a virtue.

My imagination, guided by Plato, leads me to a scenario. Let's imagine that Brazil today was a country that, with all its characteristics (especially its diversity), was on par with a developed and politically respected nation, where corrupt oligarchies had been relegated to shadows of history and no longer influenced the life of the country.

In this Platonic scenario, governing a country that had overcome its sad colonial past, Dilma Rousseff would be a sophisticated president and leader. She could suffer defeats and achieve political victories, but she wouldn't need to submit to the corrupt Brazilian political system. Without having to "negotiate" with gang leaders, Dilma would simply govern.

Although accused of being a technocrat, she could pursue her projects for the pre-salt layer, for example, the greatest treasure of the oil industry discovered this century, and one of the main reasons for the coup which, as is known, has the hand of imperialism (read here). I say that the pre-salt layer is one of the main reasons for the coup because it is not the only one: our water is another.

Speaking of empires, let's remember Barack Obama, for comparison. The President of the United States faced many difficulties starting in November 2014, when he found himself in the minority in Congress. But American democracy is stable, and Obama not having a majority doesn't mean a coup. Far from it. In Brazil, confronting the financial market (as Dilma did when lowering the Selic interest rate between 2012 and 2013) and refusing to negotiate with criminals in Congress fueled the coup attempt.

Incredibly, Dilma is already a step ahead of Lula's Workers' Party. Despite all her mistakes, she has ignited a militant base that was dormant until recently, something that seemed absurd a year ago when she was considered a traitor to the government program on which she was elected. This is thanks to the activism of the social movement which, it must be said, gave her election a character far beyond that of the Workers' Party.

I think it's important to remember that, in the context of Brazil's rotten coalition presidential system, if Dilma is held responsible for being politically incompetent, it wasn't her, but Lula, who made the deal with Temer and Sarney's PMDB.

It was certainly no coincidence that the physicist Rogério Cezar de Cerqueira Leite, an unimpeachable expert, in an article published in Folha yesterday, the 17th, compared Dilma Rousseff to Joan of Arc (read here).