Response to a friend who blames the PT (Workers' Party) for Brazil's failures.

Dear friend, I am writing a few lines to express my point of view. The motivation for writing is to substantiate this thought so that we do not speak of casuistry or the appropriation of empty discourses.

1 - Let me be clear: I do not defend and am not in favor of corruption, no matter where it comes from, and even less am I in favor of torture or murder;

2 - I never said that there was no corruption in the Workers' Party. This party is made up of human beings who make mistakes, just as people from other parties make mistakes, judges make mistakes, public prosecutors make mistakes, police officers make mistakes, and we ordinary mortals also make mistakes. Without exception, everyone should be investigated, prosecuted within the rule of law, and punished according to their participation in the crimes.

3 - The institutions Public Prosecutor's Office, Military Police, Brazilian Army, PT, PSDB, DEM, PSOL, MDB, STF and others do not commit crimes; crimes can only be committed by individuals (see item 2);

4 - The two articles above are from the press and cannot be considered absolute truth. Remember the case of the Escola de Base in Aclimação in 1992, where the press made accusations and the people went to destroy the school, and later investigations revealed it was all a hoax?

5 - Considering that a portion of it is true (because I think corruption really exists), they only accuse the PT in the media for electoral purposes, but when you read the article you discover that there are people from various parties involved. The Public Prosecutor's Office has already indicted people from most parties, and people from various parties have already been convicted. Temer himself, who usurped the presidency of the republic, is accused of being involved in several corruption cases, including at Petrobras and the Port of Santos. An Army Colonel is accused of being the operator of Temer's scheme.

6 - In Brazil, there are several battles being fought simultaneously, and people end up not understanding where they stand in these struggles, who the real enemy is, who the victim is, who the villain is; all of this is mixed up today. But when we look a little more closely, including at articles from outside Brazil, we see that our biggest problem is the same one that has existed since the genesis of our society, in my view the patriarchal and dictatorial system that maintained slavery, staged a coup in 1889 during the First Republic, created the "coffee with milk" politics, and staged a coup in 1930; Vargas led the 1932 revolution, President Vargas himself staged another coup in 1937 and was soon deposed, Vargas returned to power and, under pressure, committed suicide, Carlos Luz was impeached in 1954/55, JK won the elections but only assumed power through a state of siege, Jânio resigned in 1961, another military coup in 1964, the longest and bloodiest ever seen in Brazil, Tancredo Neves "fell ill" and died before his inauguration in 1985, another impeachment in 1992, Fernando Collor, another impeachment in August 2016, Dilma Rousseff due to reallocation of budget resources, reallocation of budget resources authorized by law approved in Congress in October 2016, and so on.

We see that power in Brazil has always been in the violent hands of the ruling class, and most of the time this ruling class has not bowed to democracy, only tolerating it for short periods until a new consolidation.

The poor never had a chance, and when they did, they were forced to ally themselves with conservative forces to survive. It was an attempt at reconciliation that we now realize didn't work. Even so, Lula was by far the best president of any of his predecessors; his achievements are already in the history books, not only of Brazil but throughout the world.

7 – Now that we have highlighted some important historical facts, we can move on to the subject of Petrobras. This state-owned company was created in 1953, during the government of Getúlio Vargas (the one who committed suicide due to pressure from the oligarchies that we now call businessmen), to develop oil production and exploration in national territory.

Petrobras did more than that, and with its oil monopoly, it grew significantly, helping Brazil in its development and industrialization. During Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government in 1995, the company suffered a break in its monopoly, and due to various pressures from sectors of society, it remained without being privatized, even though it was undercapitalized. The change for the better came during Lula's government, where the oil company was valued and began investing in research even without the monopoly. New oil reserves were discovered, including the pre-salt layer, the largest reserve in the country and one of the largest in the world. The government changed the exploration legislation with the 2010 pre-salt regulatory framework. The fuel pricing policy during Lula's government attempted to maintain the average inflation rate with periodic adjustments in relation to the dollar. This caused a reduction in the company's profits and helped control inflation in the country. During this period, Brazil and the BRICS countries experienced significant growth, and Brazil moved away from exclusive trade with the US, beginning to negotiate with countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe where its products had never before reached. Petrobras followed this trend and began exploring for oil in previously unthinkable locations; the company is now a global giant.

With the 2016 coup, Temer (lowercase and usurper) placed Mr. Pedro Parente of the PSDB party in charge of dismantling the company and, under orders from the US, handing over the exploration of the pre-salt reserves to international oil companies. Even so, Petrobras is coveted and there has been a large increase in foreign investors; Brazil's internal pricing policy is modified to serve the interests of these investors.

8 – The pricing policy was successfully implemented by the company's management, and price variations began to occur almost daily, without much fanfare from the press. Gradually, natural gas for vehicles no longer offers advantages to the consumer, alcohol (now called ethanol) has a price balanced at approximately 70% of gasoline, so the flex-fuel car no longer makes such a difference. Prices fluctuate, but at the pumps, they are always positive. This greed causes a financial imbalance for transporters who, with the manipulated inflation indices, cannot pass on the costs. In the end, we have chaos implanted in our country.

CONCLUSION:

As we can see: historically, Brazil is not democratic; the Brazilian elites have never had a vision of nation-building or uniform economic development. Even the Brazilian military, when in power, did not adopt a stance of uniting the people with the state in an egalitarian way; on the contrary, they made the people subservient to the state and the state the mother of the powerful, creating systems of self-protection for the military and judiciary, transforming them into a caste of untouchable servants.

Petrobras has become a victim of its own success, and is now exposed to internal and external attacks driven by foreign interests.

I believe that Brazil will need to break all these paradigms in our society in order to find its way forward. This path will not be easy; we will have to understand that it wasn't about R$0,20, and now it's not about diesel either. Our problem is much bigger than that.