For PSB, protests reflect the ideas of Eduardo Campos.

Pernambuco 247 - For the PSB, the protests against President Dilma Rousseff's government held in several cities across the country this Sunday (15) reflect the ideas defended by former Pernambuco governor Eduardo Campos during last year's presidential campaign. "The population wants, so to speak, what Eduardo Campos represented as a political possibility," said the national president of the PSB, Carlos Siqueira, in a statement.

According to the official statement from the party, the government distanced itself from progressive ideals, downplayed the size of the crisis, and became inactive. The statement also claims the government has "a certain laziness in engaging in politics in its noble sense and, therefore, preferred to consume its political capital, waiting for the crisis to become comfortably manageable."

Read below the full text of the PSB statement:

The scale of the popular demonstrations that swept the country this Sunday is hardly a surprise, even perhaps to those who have been following the unfolding events from afar. Before the feeling of indignation culminated in a mobilization nearing one million people across Brazil, there were already clear signs that dissatisfaction was spreading throughout society.

If we start with what is most recent and therefore clearest in everyone's memory, the old feeling that elections are one thing and real life is another, sometimes completely different, has spread among us. Thus, a government that downplayed the scale of the approaching crisis and promised to deal with it outside the conservative playbook, once elected, presents the first bill for the adjustments, clearly necessary long before the election results, to no one other than ordinary people, workers and pensioners in particular.

What fuels the outrage, in large part, is precisely this contradiction and, behind it, the keen sense of popular wisdom. The Dilma government had long since distanced itself from the more progressive agendas, a hostage to its own immobility, a certain laziness in doing politics in its noble sense, and therefore preferred to consume its political capital, waiting for the crisis to be comfortably manageable.

The cooling of the reform project fueled by popular demands, which began in 2003, was widely denounced by Governor Eduardo Campos when he broke with the Dilma government and continued to be so in the electoral debates. It was also evident at that time that significant inflationary pressures were accumulating due to the containment of administered prices, especially energy and fuel tariffs. The business environment worsened significantly, both due to the economic situation and the repeated demonstrations by the government that it preferred not to see the obvious and react promptly to emerging threats.

However, indignation over the pre- and post-election governing dichotomy is compounded by a long-standing discontent: the normalization of mismanagement and misrule, which allowed the emergence and growth of a phenomenon of enormous ethical significance, such as that of Petrobras. It is this feeling of being repeatedly betrayed, of being a kind of bastard cousin of those in power, that largely drives people to the streets. This ethical dimension associated with the crisis is, however, an expression of the government's enormous absence from political activity, which demonstrates the true scale of its weaknesses.

The "President-Manager" is the personification of a lack of willingness to engage in politics, which can only be done through broad dialogue; dialogue with equals and with those who are different; with the ruling party and the opposition, in such a way that compromises are created around collective, social goals that concretely improve people's lives. The government has preferred to manage the limitations of the status quo, but the population wants to improve their lives, they want corruption to be thoroughly and severely punished, because they do not accept politics as a place for transactions for indefinite permanence in power.

The people, therefore, are sending an unequivocal message to the government with Sunday's demonstrations. First and foremost, they want the government to rise to the occasion. They also yearn for alliances that don't involve the usual practices of simply counting votes in parliament, but rather a governing coalition based on principles that prioritizes not those who already have many, but those who, having little, feel even more threatened in this time of crisis. The population wants, so to speak, what Eduardo Campos represented as a political possibility.

This will only be possible, however, if the government significantly expands its willingness to lead a political project that is not limited to managing state structures and that does not imply surrendering to the old patrimonialist and clientelist practices that also prevail on the left, whenever the seduction of perpetuating power arises, in the name of a fallacious monopolization of popular representation.

Perhaps this is the main message of March 15th: the government that imagines itself the most authentic representative of a popular political platform must return to walking towards the people, who by this point already see it as a naked king. For this king to regain the dignity of his condition, it is necessary to awaken from the "dream" of an autocratic practice of power, to the reality of the need to operate a radical change in its modus operandi, which has aged with the speed of the ethical crisis that is dragging it down.

The partners in this shift in political action are not, however, found in the places where the government has sought its allies. The government needs to be guided by attention to popular demands and concerns, instead of selling what it cannot deliver, given its current balance of power.

This is what it's all about, in the end, this Sunday, from a political standpoint: that the government be consistent and do what is necessary, so as not to blame the people for its lack of willingness, so far, to see the challenges of the crisis in their true scale. This same demand qualifies the message: it is obviously not about impeachment, which would put everyone precisely on the path to avoid. Even less so is it about a return to military rule, since in the absence of democracy, practices thrive that the people, with their wisdom, want to see forgotten.

Brasilia-DF, March 15, 2015.

Carlos Siqueira
National President of the PSB