To try and save her mandate, Dilma will have to make a 180-degree turn in economic policy.

Dilma Rousseff assures Folha de S. Paulo that she will not fall. But it seems she hasn't yet grasped that only regaining popular support will prevent her downfall; and that very few ordinary citizens will lift a finger to save a president subservient to the draconian impositions of perverse and rapacious capitalism.

At least one of them will have to fall, Dilma or the odd one out, Joaquim Levy. The choice is hers: if she makes a 180-degree turn in economic policy, perhaps she will survive; otherwise, her days are numbered. Let's hope that, after so many mistakes, she gets it right this time!

To inspire you, I advise you to carefully read the seminal article by the veteran Jânio de Freitas (below) on the political courage and discernment of Syriza and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. They are everything that the PT and Dilma need to become if they want to escape the announced impeachment.

Look to the example of those women of Athens, Dilma! They voted with their husbands demanding respect for the pride and race of Athens.

NO

Jânio de Freitas

The Greeks had an opportunity never given to Brazilians when faced with the oppressive actions of the IMF – which is already looming. Above all, because we have never had a president who opposed this oppressive siege with the verbal and political frankness of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The suffocating demands made by the IMF-European Central Bank-European Commission triumvirate received a succinct definition from the Tsipras government. If Greece, already devastated, is required to take further measures against its population in order to receive an additional loan or, otherwise, be excluded from the "eurozone," "that is blackmail. Blackmail against the Greek people."

This is the IMF's method of operation. It involves terrible conditions coupled with terrible threats. It's an explicit "give or take." It's the projection, at the institutional and national level, of the kidnapper's blackmail to obtain the card to withdraw money from the hostage; it's the blackmail of an armed robber. The "agreements" demanded by the IMF's method are like defeat, which leads to the surrender of a bank card PIN.

The Greeks are accused of not having improved their official accounts. This is true both after the previous government implemented the austerity plan (equivalent to the fiscal "adjustment" of Joaquim Levy/Dilma Rousseff, applauded by the IMF), and with the more recent loan. Both statements are true.

Greece couldn't get any better: the plan imposed by the triumvirate has destroyed a third of the Greek GDP. One in two retirees has been plunged into poverty. Unemployment, the neglect of public health, and the devaluation of wages are causing multitudes of young people to flee their homes.

Regarding the last loan installments, it has already been said that the money simply crossed the street: from the European Central Bank to the banks, mainly German and French, on whose behalf Greece is being pressured by the IMF and the European Commission. Since Greece has no more money, the triumvirate is offering the money at interest and with degrading conditions to release it. The Greeks are saying an honorable "no." Misfortune for misfortune, let it be without humiliation, without selling dignity.

Germans and British stand out among the tormentors of Greece. They are the main contributors to Greece's misfortune in the last 60 years of the 20th century. Invaded by the Italians at the beginning of World War II, Greece did not yield, despite its military weakness. To avoid the shameful defeat of its ally Mussolini, Hitler led the Germans to invade and dominate Greece. These were horrendous atrocities that cooled Greek resistance. The reparations paid by the Germans after the war would not even cover a single day of the deaths and destruction caused by their presence in Greece.

The English, in turn, from the early 1800s to the Second World War, plundered historical riches from Greece. The amount of Greek artifacts in museums and private collections in Great Britain would pay off many Greek debts. Greece has never been compensated, not even with a semblance of reparations.

With the expulsion of the Germans and Italians, in which the Republicans, Communists, and Socialists participated, the struggle to end the Greek monarchy began. These were the Kapetanians, who received Soviet aid. Churchill decided to intervene, with the plan to re-establish the English economic dominance that had existed in Greece until the Italian invasion. And Stalin repeated what he had done with the Republicans in Spain.

The end of the civil war wasn't just about the extermination of the kapetani. It left a legacy of violence and authoritarianism that lasted for decades in dictatorships, coups, assassinations, dungeons, corruption, and poverty. But Greece today is a republic with a democracy that listens to the voice of its citizens, a beautiful rarity.

And is it Europe that condemns them? The cover of the German magazine "Der Spiegel" on June 20th featured an image of unbalanced and piled-up buildings and streets. In large letters: "Das Beben," the earthquake. It refers to the "Defeat of Europe" with the accumulation of explosive problems: "Politicians seem helpless, citizens no longer believe in the historical project of European unity."

WHEN AND HOW WILL DILMA FALL?

In April 1969, when I was just an 18-year-old who had read some Marxist classics but was far from being able to discern where political events were heading, I participated as a guest in the Congress of the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard in Mongaguá (SP), representing my group of eight high school students willing to join the organization.

Upon my return, already as a member of the VPR, I was surprised to be assigned to create and command an Intelligence sector, an absolute novelty in leftist groups and a task for which nothing in life had prepared me.

But, with the enthusiasm characteristic of youth, I threw myself deeply into my tasks, including that of, by following what was coming out in the press and supplementing it with censored news and behind-the-scenes information that allied journalists transmitted to us, projecting future scenarios. With various factions vying for power, it was extremely important to know the correlation of forces within the dictatorship, possible developments, and practical consequences (ease or radicalization, for example).

Our struggle was crushed, but the habit remained, also because it's very useful in the journalistic profession. I spent the rest of my life delving into the interpretation of future scenarios, and those who follow my work know that I'm usually right; like when I warned that it would be the biggest mistake for the Presidency of the Republic to fall to someone from the left during a period in which, imposed by the powerful of capitalism, the government would be forced to implement a neoliberal fiscal adjustment. Sure enough, the PT is being destroyed because of this, much more so than by the corruption scandals.

So now my friends are asking me, worried, how and when the Brazilian crisis will end.

I would say that the possibility of starting 2016 with Dilma as President is very small, almost none, because her rejection stems mainly from:

of the recession that is plaguing the Brazilian people, impoverishing them and causing unemployment rates to skyrocket; and
Regarding the electoral fraud, even the common people have realized that Dilma deceived everyone when she promised not to impose the strict measures that Marina Silva and Aécio Neves would have imposed.

She shouted "wolves!" and the gullible believed her, only she was a wolf too. And deceptive advertising often backfires, albeit belatedly...

The worst part is that, in the short and medium term, the hardship is only likely to increase; and so is presidential unpopularity. Because of this hostile sentiment, the accusations of Operation Lava Jato will cause ever greater damage, and should ultimately lead to an impeachment process.

When push comes to shove, I doubt that even a third of federal deputies or senators will be willing to go against the electorate's mood by defending the mandate of a president so poorly rated in opinion polls. As always, driven by political opportunism, the majority will vote with their own political future in mind.

Dilma is left with the option of not granting such an apotheotic triumph to the right wing, resigning while there is still time. After it becomes clear to the average citizen that her impeachment is inevitable, such an act will lose much of its symbolic value. If she wants to salvage some of her image, she must resign before the noose tightens around her neck.

An immediate benefit would be the cooling down of the adverse media campaign, with Operation Lava Jato ceasing to be trumpeted day and night. There is much that is artificial in this excessive emphasis.

And the biggest advantage: shifting all the blame to the enemy. With the PT out of the Presidential Palace, it's almost certain that the PSDB and PMDB will be left to manage the bankrupt mess. It won't be easy or quick for them to rebuild the Brazilian economy; therefore, they will have to assume the unpleasant role of target for quite some time, while the PT members begin to emerge from the bottom of the well by once again becoming the slingshots.

Ultimately, the real choice left to the PT (Workers' Party) is when to leave: it might do well to bow to the evidence of the facts, but it will sink much further if it insists on going against an already irresistible tide.

As for the timing, I would guess that the right wing will continue to gather strength throughout this month, since it's a school holiday period and consequently a time of demobilization for the population; and that it will take to the streets in full force starting in August, with a high chance that 2015 will indeed be a month of madness, like that of 1961.

One date to be feared is August 16th, a Sunday when there will be new nationwide protests against the government. All the right wing will need is a useful corpse (or corpses) to serve as an emotional ingredient, the icing on the cake of the national commotion they want to create (along the lines, for example, of the deaths of the MMDC students in May 1932).

If I were Lula, I would urge the militants of the PT, CUT, MST, MTST, etc., to stay far away from Paulista Avenue and other demonstration sites, so as not to risk playing into the enemy's hands.

Published on the blog Shipwrecked by Utopia