PT without fear

The Workers' Party (PT) will survive the crisis and persecution if it is able to be an instrument of struggle for the working class, and if it is greater than the sum of its tendencies, groups, leaders, parliamentarians, and government officials.

It will be a protagonist if it knows how to give voice and organization to the new subjects and actors emerging from social, trade union, cultural and political struggles, if it is a spokesperson and channeling space for the struggles of more than 70% of the population that the current neoliberal model pushes towards exclusion from income and citizenship.

The 367 deputies and 61 senators who joined in the coup against popular sovereignty did so for personal and shady interests, but mainly to serve the wealthy elite of Brazil, who care little about our subservience as long as they maintain their concentration of wealth, as well as the wealthy of the world who want Brazil as a breadbasket, subservient to their interests.

The so-called "Bridge to the Future," drafted by the PSDB, presented by the PMDB, and defended by Temer's illegitimate government, represents a return to agro-export colonialism, a model to which international division has always sought to confine us.

THE REASONS FOR THE COUP

To defeat the popular sovereignty that elected the program for deepening rights.

To revoke President Dilma's mandate, promoting a voracious persecution of President Lula and the PT (Workers' Party), through a state of exception with a clear rupture of democracy.

To render the state anemic, incapable of formulating economic policies or protecting the most vulnerable.

Discouraging industrial development and destroying national, state-owned, and private companies. Look at the situation of Petrobras, our engineering sector, and the shipbuilding industry.

Making the labor market more flexible is detrimental to workers and beneficial to capital. Constitutional Amendment Proposal 241/55 is the legal and political instrument used to institutionalize the dismantling of rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution.

In addition to their authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies, the coup plotters are interested in perpetuating a regressive tax policy that favors rentiers and financial capital.

The PT (Workers' Party) must refuse the ordeal.

In 2017, the PT (Workers' Party) will be 37 years old, and its 6th Congress must reject the ordeal imposed by the media in cooperation with the coup forces.

No truly progressive and democratic political force should join in this overwhelming massacre that conservative troops are unleashing against Lula and the PT.

A resigned and submissive PT (Workers' Party) is neither understandable nor acceptable. To ask forgiveness for improving the lives of the poorest? For making Brazil respected? For successfully leading the organization of BRICS? For increasing wages with real gains above inflation? For raising the minimum wage? For improving access to health and education? For transferring 14% of income to the "lower classes"? Let those who wish to do so, but not in the name of the PT.

We shouldn't martyr ourselves or engage in witch hunts before asking why Brazilian society tolerates such astronomical interest rates, absurd tax evasion, a scandalously unfair tax policy, a centuries-old practice of capital flight, and one of the highest concentrations of income on the planet. This is the true corruption inherent in the capitalist mode of production.

The Workers' Party (PT) doesn't need to worry about being new or old, but rather should be the synthesis of its accumulated experience and learning from more than three decades of vying for hegemony, alongside progressive sectors of society in conflict with the hegemonic forces of capital.

The PT is still the party with the largest active and militant contingent to lead these battles and prepare for 2018.

It is up to us, though not exclusively, to take the initiative to democratize the debate, to mobilize the energies that are dissatisfied with the dismantling of our heritage, our rights, and our democracy.

Leftist, progressive, democratic, and nationalist forces need to unite because the coup and its objectives are rooted in geopolitics and are entrenched in Brazil through intelligence agencies that work for foreign transnational corporations and their respective countries.

The interests of these companies in Brazil's pre-salt oil reserves and natural resources are the reason they finance this puppet show, a kind of "João Redondo" (a Brazilian puppet show), which has the hands, feet, intelligence, technology, and logistics to carry out its interests.

PT's Challenges

The 2018 election is the decisive stage in this cycle of confrontations with hegemonic capital. Lula still presents himself as the only leader capable of leading a popular and nationalist democratic bloc, and the PT, even under constant attacks and with the significant defeats in 2016, continues to be the political force with the greatest reach and latent energy to call everyone to this challenge.

The forces behind the coup are clearly bewildered; the recordings in the Gedel/Temer/Calero case suggest that there is a possibility of a coup within a coup.

The PSDB was the big beneficiary of the PT's decline in the 2016 elections and is now conspiring to take power without a popular vote.

To achieve this, they are counting on the confusion of the political crisis and on having many allies within the conflicting institutions, as well as the approval of the media.

We must mount a programmatic opposition to the coup government, uniting all forces against the neoliberal program defeated in the 2014 elections.

To make the debate free and open to all who wish to contribute to our challenges, without secrets, without cliques, without ghettos, without intolerance or bureaucracy. Overcoming our limitations is a challenge, being able to listen to what is different, without sectarianism or official creeds. And "so as not to say that I didn't mention the flowers," a renewed direction, neither of the enlightened, nor of the academics.

For the sake of consistency, but also out of necessity, we need to revive and encourage the Zonal Directorates, the digital and in-person groups in all spaces where our activism is present: workplace, home. Our defeat in the 2016 municipal elections means that the battlefront has shifted from the castle to the ground.

We must defend the PT (Workers' Party), Lula, our legacy, democracy, and the rule of law.

Among our many legacies, our most important is our activism, which is not only fierce but also generous. We can credit it for our victories and achievements, and it is with this activism that we will face the challenges of the current situation.