Kotscho: If they could, 70 million Brazilians would leave post-coup Brazil.
Journalist Ricardo Kotscho comments on the Datafolha survey, released this Sunday (17), according to which 70 million Brazilians over 16 years old would live in another country; "It would mean the biggest diaspora of a generation and would definitively compromise our future," says the journalist; "They auctioned off our future without pity or mercy. And next week there's more. They won't leave a stone unturned, not a single barrel of oil to tell the story of the pre-salt."
By Ricardo Kotscho, on your blog - A Datafolha poll released this Sunday confirms a growing sentiment among the population: Brazilians want to leave behind the Brazil that remains after the 2016 parliamentary coup.
We were once 70 million in action, remember? Now, if they could, 70 million Brazilians over the age of 16 would live in another country, which would mean the largest diaspora of a generation and would definitively compromise our future.
The numbers are even more dramatic among young people: six out of ten Brazilians between the ages of 16 and 24 dream of leaving, the equivalent of the entire population of Minas Gerais, as shown in Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto's report in Folha.
Brazil is no longer the country of the future. It is a country without a future for young people, with approximately 30 million workers already unemployed or underemployed.
Just four years ago, in the last general elections, if this same survey had been applied, the results would certainly have been very different, absolutely opposite.
In 2014, Brazil was experiencing full employment, with rising incomes across all social strata, all positive economic indicators, and high self-esteem in a country respected worldwide.
You only need to turn the country's socio-economic map upside down to find the current situation, in which the country has once again burned through its reserves to avoid a surge in the dollar and has become a laughingstock wherever we go abroad.
They ousted an elected president in the name of fighting corruption and installed a gang in power, with the sole objective of serving the market, foreign interests, and destroying the social gains of workers in recent decades.
We went back twenty years in two, as the government propaganda said, without a comma.
Brazilians today, on the day of the national team's debut in the World Cup in Russia, are ashamed to wear the yellow jersey and wave flags.
Many have already left here, out of shame or due to lack of work and hope.
The number of visa applications to the United States has doubled in recent years, and the Portuguese consulate in São Paulo alone has granted 50 visas since 2016, the year of the coup.
This exodus is only likely to grow because even the elections scheduled for less than four months from now offer no hope that this scenario will change, regardless of who is elected.
In an interview with Estadão this Sunday, one of the government-backed candidates, Geraldo Alckmin of the PSDB party, made a pathetic statement about the "illegitimacy" of Michel Temer's government for not having been elected.
He only discovered this now? Where was he when his party, the PSDB, celebrated with Temer the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, returning to power without having been elected and appointing several ministers?
Now nobody wants to carry the coffin they themselves built to climb the ramp of the Planalto Palace without votes.
These are the votes Alckmin now needs to break through in the polls, where he can't even beat Jair Bolsonaro in São Paulo, a state his party has governed for over twenty years.
The Datafolha survey on Brazilians' disenchantment with Brazil is the requiem for a devastating operation to destroy the country, which may now fall into the hands of a delusional former army captain.
Meanwhile, the moribund Temer government drags on in the basements of the palaces, reviled by the population, for the six and a half months it has left.
If I were a little younger and didn't have five grandchildren here, I would take the same path as 43% of the Brazilian population who want to leave Brazil before it's too late.
I'm very sorry, but this is the summary of what happened on a day that should have been a celebration, with everyone sharing the same emotion, but instead it feels like a funeral.
Winning or losing in Russia, it doesn't matter, Brazil will never be the same again, not even if Neymar makes it rain.
Nothing will be able to improve our lives anytime soon. They auctioned off our future without pity or remorse. And next week there's more. They won't leave a stone unturned, not a single barrel of oil to tell the story of the pre-salt reserves.
Life goes on.