Renato Janine Ribeiro: electing Lula is not enough, it is necessary to support the elected government.
The next term will have to invest in political awareness, and society needs to take responsibility for its own vote, says philosopher; watch the full video.
By Pedro Alexandre Sanches, from Opera Mundi - Political scientist and philosopher Renato Janine Ribeiro points to the following as priorities for the reconstruction of Brazil, in a possible new government led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: confronting the wave of hatred that has swept the country, combating hunger, tax reform, and raising political awareness in society. This was stated in an interview with journalist Haroldo Ceravolo Sereza on the program... 20 MINUTES This Friday (September 29th), he demanded that society be made aware of the need to take more responsibility for their own vote and for supporting and sustaining the president they elect.
"Political awareness is not leftist propaganda. If you elected Dilma Rousseff or whoever it was, but did not support the continuation of your elected official, you lack political and democratic awareness," warns the current president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC).
According to the political scientist, voting is not a game where the voter "votes for anyone and says that if it doesn't work out, we'll take them out later." "That's not true; taking someone out is very difficult. It's good sometimes to reap the fruits of what you've sown and take responsibility for what you've done," he said.
Ribeiro states that, from a political standpoint, the Brazilian tendency to place all hopes and responsibilities on the shoulders of the Workers' Party candidate is a "hindrance" to the effort to rebuild the country: "We are believing too much that Lula will solve everything. He can't solve it alone; he needs significant support."
From a human perspective, on the other hand, the main task is to confront and suspend the climate of hatred that has taken over Brazil, and, according to him, the founder of the PT is one of the few people who possesses the necessary human qualities for this: “Lula is a person of great listening skills, with surprising emotional intelligence. I think he is capable of recovering, although, or perhaps even because of this, he himself has been the target of much hatred, including the setup that the Lava Jato group orchestrated for its own interests against him and the PT.”
In practical terms, the philosopher identifies growth and redistribution of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as priority goals. Tax reform would be urgent to achieve the second objective, including as an auxiliary tool to combat hunger among 33 million citizens.
Author of the newly released book Machiavelli, Democracy, and Brazil (Published by Estação Liberdade/Edições Sesc), Ribeiro describes himself as optimistic about the future, despite everything. He welcomes, for example, the turnaround since 2019: “when Lula regained his political rights, he gave an admirable speech and took the kids off the playground. Who were these kids? Luciano Huck, Eduardo Leite, João Doria. Look at the level of the discussion two years ago, look how much it improved with Lula's candidacy.”
Wide front
The political scientist celebrates the current broad anti-Bolsonaro front and assesses Bolsonaro's coup-plotting prospects should he lose the election: "He's gone too far with this. He'll only recognize [his political affiliation] if the election is clean, and the election is only clean if he's elected. If he continues down this path, it's going to be complicated."
The lack of political awareness among Brazilians, he argues, is reflected in the belief that limiting far-right coup attempts will happen more from abroad than from within: “It’s a shame that we end up believing more in abstract forces than in our own efforts. In Argentina, every time they flirted with returning to dictatorship, the people took to the streets. In Brazil, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do that.”
Ribeiro recommends that the federal government make a significant investment in the foundations of education in the near future, a responsibility currently largely the responsibility of municipal and state governments: “It is essential to address the challenge of basic education. The good thing is that, even when the PT and PSDB were at odds, this was a point of convergence.”
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