Vera Lúcia: PSTU in government will nationalize the 100 largest companies in Brazil without compensation.

By Pedro Alexandre Sanches, from Opera Mundi - A candidate for President of Brazil from the Unified Socialist Workers' Party (PSTU), the social scientist from Pernambuco, Vera Lúcia, promises to nationalize, without granting compensation, the 100 largest companies in Brazil, including banks, agribusiness, and large private health and housing networks.

The measure will also affect ports, airports, highways, railways, and water and sanitation companies. 

In an interview with journalist Breno Altman on 20 MINUTES This Friday (September 23), the candidate stated that historical reparations for indigenous and Afro-descendant populations will be achieved through the return of indigenous lands and the titling of quilombola territories. "We are very grateful for the quotas, but we want more," she says.

She justifies not compensating capitalist companies: “They’ve already profited too much. There’s no reason to compensate these people. You bring a company here to exploit workers, pay miserable wages, then it leaves without paying anything. Are we going to nationalize it and compensate them? No, they’re already compensated. They won’t starve, they won’t even become poor.” 

Among the priority emergency measures, if elected, are doubling the minimum wage, repealing the labor and pension reforms, encouraging the organization of the working class, halting the payment of the public debt, and allocating the resources to unemployed workers. 

“The debt will no longer go to five banks, as Paulo Guedes said, in a moment of candor, at that fateful ministerial meeting,” he pointed out. According to his proposal, ministers of state would be directly elected through popular councils.

When questioned by Altman about the lack of electoral unity among revolutionary left-wing parties, Lúcia stated that joint action should take place in the streets, not in candidacies for public office. “We are champions at uniting in action during demonstrations, throughout our entire existence. The most recent ones have been to oust Bolsonaro, but also the vice-president, Hamilton Mourão. We are different even in that,” she said.

In recent years, the PSTU was criticized for advocating in the streets for the removal of President Dilma Rousseff alongside right-wing sectors, with the difference that it also demanded the fall of Vice-President Michel Temer. Today, the party opposes the broad front organized around the candidacy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, because it is "a watered-down project aligned with the right and the 'centrist' bloc," in the candidate's words.

Lúcia argues that all state institutions continued to function after Dilma's departure and continue to do so to this day. "Bolsonaro dreams of closing down the regime, but he hasn't done it yet. There has been no change in the pillars that constitute the democratic state. The democratic freedoms that existed continue to exist," she defended.

Also controversial were the PSTU's positions regarding Operation Lava Jato and Lula's imprisonment, which prevented the former president from running in the 2018 presidential race. "One can say that the trial was biased, but one cannot say that there was no corruption. We said that we did not trust that operation, because we also do not trust the Justice system itself," he says, denying any adherence to the process conducted by Judge Sergio Moro. 

According to her, the PSTU wanted Lula and Dilma to be judged by the streets. “The one who wanted to be judged by the courts was Lula himself. He never called for protests in the streets. He chose to, and is the problem ours, the PSTU's? How can it be justified that those who voted for Dilma's downfall are now embracing Lula?” she asks. 

The candidate does not reveal which direction the PSTU will take in a possible second round, but states that, after the first round, the party will state its position and justify the reasons for that position, whatever it may be. 

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