Impeachment, coup d'état and 'market' dictatorship

From the Carta Maior website

Impeachment is an attempt to annul, through legislation, by the vote of 513 deputies and 81 senators, the results of the November 2014 elections that reflected the will of the majority of the Brazilian people in re-electing President Dilma Rousseff with 53 million votes.

Since 2003, television networks, especially TV Globo; major newspapers, such as Estado de São Paulo, Folha de São Paulo, and O Globo; and leading magazines, such as Veja, IstoÉ, and Época, have been engaged in a systematic campaign to discredit the Workers' Party and progressive parties and to try to "prove" the inefficiency, mismanagement, and corruption of the PT governments, including their social programs, which lifted 40 million Brazilians out of misery and poverty.

Now, with the help of members of the Judiciary, the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the Federal Police, the media, having lost the election to their candidate, are trying to create a political and opinion climate that will overthrow or immobilize the President and thus nullify the will of the majority of the Brazilian people.

They do this by releasing, day after day, the statements of informants, confessed criminals, and prosecutors, police officers, and judges who selectively "leak" them to the media, committing a blatant illegality, and publishing news about the extraordinary chaos and corruption in which the country is supposedly living.

Faced with the political instability generated by this campaign, President Dilma, with the aim of containing coup attempts (vote recounts, accusations of fraud, various threats, etc.) and appeasing the "market," announced a program of austerity, budgetary balance, contraction of state spending, and reduction of investments, hoping to win the "confidence of investors," her main objective, and to "calm" her political opponents.

It is important to note that the "market" is not a civil society entity, but rather, in reality, a tiny group of multimillionaires, investors, speculators, and rentiers, and their "employees," namely the so-called chief economists of banks and funds, economic journalists and columnists, and their associates abroad.

There are economists and journalists who are a notable exception to this statement, but they are a small minority.

When the adjustment program was presented, it was emphatically stated that it would not affect workers' gains (legislation on working hours, vacations, retirement, unemployment insurance, etc.), nor social programs, but that it would balance the budget through contingency measures, spending cuts, and tax increases, with the goal of creating a primary surplus that would allow for the payment of public debt interest and gain "market confidence, investor confidence."

Gaining "investor confidence" means getting them to decide to make investments (to obtain profits) and thus expand installed capacity, generate jobs, a condition for the resumption of development.

"Investor confidence," however, is related to the expansion of demand, since only with this (sustained) expansion can profitable investment opportunities arise.

Building "trust" and attracting investment are unlikely in a context where interest rates on government bonds and financial investments are rising to the highest levels in the world, attracting capital to the financial, speculative, or rentier sector, and diverting it from the productive sector and, therefore, from investment.

Other factors that negatively affect investor "confidence" are predatory and destructive import competition; inadequate exchange rates; reduced public investment in infrastructure; increased interest rates on long-term BNDES financing; reduced demand and increased unemployment (which some hope could create the political conditions for a climate favorable to impeachment) due to reduced economic activity.

There is a mantra, repeated incessantly, about competitiveness and productivity, chanted by many public authorities, academics, "specialized" journalists, chief economists of consulting firms, companies, and banks, who are, in reality, employees of the "market."

According to these "experts," solving internal problems—that is, resuming growth and distancing oneself from the latent and increasingly threatening external crisis—would depend not only on "investor confidence" but also on increased productivity (that is, production per worker) and increased competitiveness of Brazilian companies in the face of Chinese, American, and European companies, and on reducing the "Brazil Cost."

Regarding productivity, some argue that its increase resulted from a large, sustained investment in education, as they claim developed countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Korea have done, and that this was, according to them, an important, and perhaps the main, reason for their development.

The champions of education advocate for general primary education, special attention to early childhood, and the inclusion of all children and young people (and adults?) in the system. There is little discussion about teacher training, full-time schooling, or the negative effects of television and the internet on the core of the education system, which is the time young people dedicate to studying. One might ask when these Brazilians, currently infants and young adults, would enter the job market to make the workforce more productive and Brazil more competitive: in 10 years? In 15? And even then?

Others argue that "labor costs" (part of the "Brazil Cost") are too high (compared to "costs" in which countries? China? The United States? Germany?) and that, therefore, it would be necessary to reduce these "costs" by preventing "artificial" increases in the minimum wage (since there would be no labor shortage), reducing labor legislation benefits, encouraging labor turnover, etc.

Regarding the "Brazil Cost," they argue that it stems from high transportation and energy costs, a high tax burden, multiple taxes, and "hellish" bureaucracy.

They also complain about the "excessive" intervention of the State (state-owned companies and regulation) and call for, although so far only hinting at it, the privatization of these companies and "debureaucratization," that is, less law and more freedom for capital.

According to proponents of the austerity program, increased domestic productivity would lead to international competitiveness, with all its advantages, such as a stable trade surplus, market diversification, and increased exports of manufactured goods.

Thus, the current crisis would be overcome. However, the truth is different.

The current crisis, partly real and partly fabricated, stems from the conservative revolt due to President Dilma having committed two "deadly sins" in the light of the interests of the "market," that is, those individuals who benefit from the concentration of wealth, income, and political power in Brazil, namely the great multimillionaires, rural and urban landowners, rentiers, bankers, and their representatives in the media, Congress, and the Judiciary.

The first "sin" was the policy of reducing interest rates, albeit temporarily; the second "sin" was the support, albeit timid, for the democratization of the media.

The financial and banking system is the main instrument for the concentration of wealth in Brazil. By reducing interest rates at public banks and forcing a reduction in interest rates at private banks (which was quickly offset by an increase in administrative "fees"), the President reduced the transfer of wealth from society and the State to private banks, their shareholders, and holders of government bonds. The President struck at the heart of the economic system's concentration mechanism and provoked the anger of conservative sectors that are now calling for the privatization of public banks.

The communications system in Brazil is the instrument of the dominant classes to construct the popular imagination, to manipulate information, to justify the current economic and social system, and to demoralize those who fight for greater equality, freedom, fraternity, and the rights of minorities, within a context of development.

The concentration of media power "condemns" those it accuses by tirelessly disseminating and repeating "information" before trials, and transformed the Mensalão scandal into a pre-trial trial against which the Supreme Federal Court (STF) could not resist, accepting the improper conduct of its then-President and the press campaign.

The same is happening with Operation Lava Jato. There is no initiative from the Judiciary to prevent the formation of public opinion against the accused, generated by accusations, without evidence, made by confessed criminals who denounce indiscriminately when, in the case of plea bargaining procedures, investigations should be conducted under the utmost secrecy, since these are accusations made by criminals seeking personal gain. The media has transformed the request from the Attorney General's Office to investigate certain individuals into proof of their guilt. Those individuals, politicians or not, who are investigated and found guilty should be punished severely, but the press cannot replace the Judiciary nor constrain it for purely political reasons.

By threatening those two cornerstones of the conservative order, the financial system and the media, President Dilma became "guilty," and the opposition insists, albeit covertly, that she should be punished by being removed from office through an impeachment process.

It would be important for the Government to understand that what is actually happening is a political maneuver whose objectives are, in order:
- To make the Government adopt the economic and social program of the "market," that is, of the multimillionaire minority and its external "associates";
- to fill public administration positions (Ministries, Executive Secretariats, Regulatory Agencies) with representatives from the "market";
- To weaken the government politically and economically;
- To weaken the PT and progressive parties with a view to 2018;
- to approve laws that are in the interest of the "market";
- and, if none of that happens, make the Government "bleed" and then, if necessary and possible, demand the impeachment of the President.

Against this enormous and multifaceted economic, media, and political offensive by the "market," its "employees," and representatives, there is only one possible strategy: intense political action alongside popular movements, civil society organizations, Congress, the Public Administration, and Governors—in short, the mobilization of society for its enlightenment in defense of democracy in its entirety.

It is essential that, in distributing its advertising funds, the Government takes into account the existence of community, university, and educational television stations, community radio stations, blogs and websites, and small and medium-sized regional newspapers and broadcasters, and ceases to concentrate the distribution of funds and advertisements solely on the mainstream media, which strengthens oligopolies that operate in an overtly partisan manner and against the majority of the people, stimulating violent antagonisms and radicalizing society.

The popular demonstrations against the government and against President Dilma have brought together citizens who, for the most part, voted against the President's re-election in 2014.

Today, fueled by the media and organizations of nebulous identity and origin, through social networks, dissatisfied with the defeat and under the pretext of denouncing corruption, they are initiating the political process of "Out with Dilma," which is, in fact, a pro-impeachment campaign.

Impeachment is a coup d'état by the "market." Those who defend impeachment today and create a climate of instability and radicalization are the same historical coup plotters of 1954 and 1964: the privileged classes who fear progress and the results of democracy and do not accept them, despite Brazil having one of the ten worst income concentrations in the world, while its GDP is one of the ten largest in the world, and despite the urgent need to halt the process of income concentration (which the crisis accentuates) so that it is possible to build a more just, more democratic, more prosperous, and more stable society.

For this objective to be achieved, Brazilian society must not submit to the dictatorship of the "market," whose members have been the main beneficiaries of the crisis that began in 2008 and shows no solid signs of ending.