This Congress didn't fall from the sky.

An ugly child has no father. It seems that nobody voted to elect this Congress, nobody financed their million-dollar campaigns, nobody influenced public opinion, which resulted in this Congress.

Congress has become a joke. It's worthless, lacks credibility, is corrupt, and defends its own interests. Along with the current government, they are decisively contributing to the demoralization of politics, causing people to lose interest in it.

But who elected them? Who benefits from their discrediting?

The large private companies that financed their campaigns have a clear logic: to have in Congress those who defend their interests. When they finance campaigns, they are investing in mandates, which should give them returns. When Odebrecht confessed to financing 140 deputies, electing a bloc of its own, it bought their mandates, with parliamentarians who do not represent the interests of the people, of the country, but of the companies that paid to elect them. Private campaign financing should be a crime; it was legalized and perhaps may continue to be so, even if in a less open way. These are partly responsible for this Congress. And those who opposed public funds contributed to this system continuing as it has until now.

But another major factor is the private media, which, with its monopolies, not only fails to contribute to public awareness by disseminating information about who they are, what interests they defend, what approvals they rejected during their mandates, and does not promote open, pluralistic debates. But also, in its daily actions, it strongly contributes to the depoliticization and alienation of the people.

When the media campaigns against politics, propagating the idea that all politicians are corrupt, it fosters disinterest in politics, trying to convey the notion that they are all the same. This favors depoliticization, increasing the possibility that people will vote for just anyone or even vote based on personal interests.

The immense blocs representing rural landowners, gun lobbyists, private education, private health insurance companies, and evangelicals occupy a large part of Congress and are responsible for this immense indecency in Parliament. But for them to be there, private funding, the depoliticization of the media, and the actions of those corporations to elect their representatives were necessary.

But there is a factor that has to do with the popular field. Even by a small margin, Dilma Rousseff managed to get re-elected, which means that the PT governments' project managed to maintain its majority, but this was not reflected in the parliamentary elections. It means that the left-wing parties, the social movements, all those who make up the left-wing field, were not even able to maintain the composition of the previous Congress.

We failed to re-elect a significant portion of the best parliamentarians, and we failed to elect a new generation to represent young people, women, and Black people. The unions did not elect representatives to represent their interests. And each of us was unable to convince many more people of the need to elect parliamentary representatives aligned with the government.

The result was disastrous for democracy – just look at the coup –, for popular interests – just look at the cuts in resources for social policies and workers' rights – and for the country – just look at the liquidation of public assets through privatizations.

As former President Lula says, this Congress represents the will of the people at the time of the election. And at that moment, the right wing, taking advantage of the power of money, media monopolies, and the weaknesses of the popular movement, produced this Congress, which didn't fall from the sky.

It now remains for the popular movement to have candidates and take responsibility for their election, to support the re-election of left-wing parliamentarians, to promote new generations of candidates—young people, women, black people—so that Congress reflects society and not the faces of Eduardo Cunha, Michel Temer, and Aécio Neves.