The coup has succeeded once again, what to do?

Michel Temer and his cronies remain in power and will likely remain so until December 2018. It is clear that the coup-plotting and sell-out consortium doesn't care about the price to buy parliamentary support. Just state the price and they pay with amendments, decrees, laws, sales of state-owned companies, increased service prices, and loss of rights.

Temer and his cronies are betting on three lines of action to follow until 2018: 1) a parliamentary coalition to approve the pension reform; 2) on the economic front, increasing tax revenue; 3) political maneuvering to consolidate the coalition in order to act in a unified manner in the 2018 elections, both in the presidential race and in regional alliances. All of this aims to determine Temer's strength in 2018 and which candidate to support.

The impeachment adventure – a coup from within – opened a very wide political vacuum. What remained was scorched earth, a country indiscriminately plundered, with institutions unable to function and act politically and institutionally. The Supreme Federal Court (STF), for example, is without leadership. It lacks the unity and stature to fulfill its role as guardian of the Constitution. The idea of ​​collegiality has gone out the window, as the Ministers act independently every day. And worse: each one in a different position. The mainstream corporate media has completely lost its way. They have allowed themselves to be dictated by Lava Jato, which in turn makes the persecution of Lula something increasingly scandalous and which is now being questioned by the media conglomerates most aligned with the coup.

The right wing doesn't have a clear project. On the contrary, they have a negation of a project. Their central objective is to prevent us from returning to the times of the last decade: a democratic, sovereign Brazil that combats poverty and inequality with economic growth. That's why they are trying to prevent Lula from running in the 2018 election. The right wing is riding the wave of the state of exception, of the dictatorship of the judiciary. Opportunistic, the right wing knows that it only has the capacity, through the negation and criminalization of politics, to sweep away the democratic center and the left.

What to do?

Even without consensus within the democratic-popular field, the idea is taking shape that the way out of this crisis lies in the 2018 elections. Lula's caravans across Brazil point in this direction, towards the need for the people to speak out against this agenda of setbacks, this neoliberal vendetta that has been imposed upon us.

We must focus on building a strategic, democratic, and popular project that guides the country towards resuming economic growth, reducing inequalities, and, above all, deepening democracy, restoring the democratic rule of law, and guaranteeing fundamental rights.

From there, we must work to win the elections, regain the presidency and the central government, immediately revoking, through a referendum, all the authoritarian and subservient legacy perpetrated by the coup-plotting consortium. For this, it is necessary to understand that forming unorthodox alliances will be necessary and decisive.