Protests, government, plebiscite, and the right wing's backfire.

By Davis Sena Filho

The June protests shook up Brazil's political landscape and the daily lives of Brazilians. The protests were largely composed of middle-class groups, such as self-employed professionals, small and medium-sized business owners, conservative political groups, as well as far-right groups, and especially students, the vast majority of whom were children of the middle class, in addition to far-left political segments that oppose the PT government of President Dilma Rousseff and, as always, fail to see what is at stake right under their noses.

The demonstrations made it clear that the middle class and the Brazilian population in general want more than what they have already achieved in the last eleven years of labor governments, which, without a doubt, placed Brazil at levels of political and economic influence never before experienced in our history in international terms, as well as allowing the United States to be heard more in international forums, electing, in 2011, the agronomist José Graziano as Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in addition to electing this year the diplomat Roberto Azevêdo to the position of Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), one of the most influential and powerful international bodies in the world.

The two international leaders were elected during the Lula and Dilma Labor governments, receiving unconditional support from the leaders at a time when the foreign press, hostile to Brazilian interests, downplayed these important political and diplomatic achievements, and used commentators, columnists, and bloggers to diminish the importance of these victories, to the point that some journalists even personally discredited the two Brazilian leaders who had won the most important positions at the FAO and the WTO. Period.

This is the Brazil that the "elites" and the middle class refuse to see and show, for purely ideological and prejudiced reasons, because they live and, consequently, carry out the class struggle. The giant of South America that combats the international crisis with its strong domestic market and led the creation of the G-20 and BRICS, in addition to strengthening South-South relations, instead of only being at the mercy of diplomatic and commercial relations with the United States and the European Union, also strengthening Mercosur and Unasur and burying once and for all the FTAA, a bloc whose purpose was to expose the very strong Brazilian domestic market to products from the United States, a country accustomed to protecting its domestic market by granting subsidies to numerous agricultural and manufactured products.

The protesters formed heterogeneous groups, without organized agendas and, for some time, without representatives to dialogue with the government. Furthermore, Brazilian society perceived the absence of the large mass of workers linked to confederations and, consequently, to the thousands of urban and rural unions associated with federations existing in all Brazilian states. In turn, the social and economic advances of the Brazilian people are undeniable; one only needs to research and verify the numbers and indices on the Transparency Portal, on the portals of all ministries and respected institutions, such as the Central Bank, IBGE, and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation.

However, the dissatisfied took to the streets and demonstrated to the Government that Brazilians want more, which is fair and helped to awaken the Presidential Palace to the reforms that were frozen and to improve, for example, health and education, sectors that have received many federal resources in the last eleven years, although in many states and cities the population does not perceive the progress, after all the budget funds are transferred to the governors and mayors, who have the power to direct them to the areas they consider priorities.

We know, in turn, that the Brazilian crisis of June is not as simple, much less as simplistic as conservative journalists tried to make us believe, and even less so does it apply to the European, Japanese, and North American crises, which are crises with an economic, financial, and real estate basis, causing widespread unemployment, a fall in stock market indices, public debt, strangling the economies of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland, and affecting powerful countries like France and England.

The European crisis also led to events such as capital flight, credit shortages, decreased public investment, and very low GDP growth, in addition to the intervention of the IMF, an institution that Brazilians know so well, with its neoliberal economic prescriptions that fight the disease by killing the patient, as well as disrupting the social structures of countless peoples, who have transformed their days into protests since 2008, which have hit and continue to hit the most important cell of society, the family.

However, the marches, protests, and demonstrations throughout Brazil turned violent. This violence was mitigated by the mainstream media, historical adversaries of the labor-oriented government, which had urgently needed, for many years, an agenda that would at least question and make the Federal Government, administered by politicians from the left, feel for the first time the dissatisfaction of the streets, even if it was clearly and indelibly promoted by members of the middle class with evidently conservative profiles. 

The government and President Dilma Rousseff's proposal was to call upon the Brazilian people to decide on Brazilian issues through a plebiscite, which will deepen important discussions such as the implementation of political reform. This reform will undoubtedly alter archaic and corrupt structures, both in the electoral and party systems, which, since the Old Republic and the military dictatorship, have kept the country in an outdated political and electoral process that favors corruption. This is because the 1988 Constitution still has articles that have not yet been regulated, thus preventing the modernization of our electoral system.

The national bourgeoisie, the press barons who own the private and market-driven media system, and the right-wing parties, represented by the PSDB, DEM, and PPS, and with the support of blindly "leftist" politicians from the PSOL, have already shown themselves to be against the plebiscite. They will, without a doubt, campaign against it, because the right wing talks a lot up to a point. When they realize that the plan has backfired in the case of the plebiscite proposal, they retreat to protect their interests and businesses, as they have always done throughout history—for centuries. The right wing is, ideologically and doctrinally, violent, cynical, and hypocritical.

The truth is that these economic groups, owned by conservative, and therefore right-wing, businessmen, don't want political reform because, otherwise, they would have more difficulty financing their candidates, as they have favored them to this day, to the detriment of the majority, with a lot of money. The candidates of the bourgeoisie are the politicians who can defend them in a practical way, in addition to serving as their spokespeople in Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive branch. The interests of large urban and rural businesses are unconfessable, and their elected candidates wear their suits as if they were wearing the advertising-laden racing suits of Formula One drivers. Nothing more needs to be said, right? Period.

The conservatives' plan backfired, because the Labor government has already received political support from the parties in its base, in addition to recently receiving visits at the Presidential Palace from leaders of different backgrounds, such as social movements, labor unions, the LGBT community, urban movements, youth movements, as well as the Free Fare Movement (MPL), the group responsible for starting the protests, with a left-wing agenda that demanded that bus fares not increase, which was achieved — won.

The transportation issue that sparked the protests was opportunistically, manipulatively, and violently "embraced" or hijacked by right-wing media groups, the reactionary middle class, and politicians from opposition parties, such as the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), a party defeated three times at the polls and politically unsuccessful for lacking a government program and a national project. They attempted to exploit the demonstrations for their own benefit and ridiculously act as interpreters of a social movement that the PSDB politicians will never interpret in a serious, correct, and timely manner. Because if there's one thing the PSDB, the barons of the venal and market-driven press, and the traditional middle class cannot understand, it is precisely the Brazilian people.  

The demonstrations, in fact, strengthened the left, because it opened itself to debate without fear and with concrete proposals. Besides lowering bus fares, it invited social movements to engage in dialogue, thus opening the "black box" of the transportation sector, as the mayors of the two largest capitals in the country—Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo—will do, for example, as well as many others, obviously.

Time will reveal the opportunists and cheats in politics and corporate media. The left caught the conservative opposition with its pants down. With the strengthening of the debate and the plebiscite proposal, the right will have to back down regarding the referendum that it hypocritically proposed to the government and society. The right has been weakened because, with the referendum proposal, it has shown once again, unequivocally, that it is not willing to listen to the people, much less let them decide on political reform, which ultimately removes the financial privileges of right-wing candidates, who are always the favorites of large national and international businesses. Political reform ends the practice of undeclared campaign contributions.

The people asked for change, and the government's response, I repeat, comes in the form of reforms, and the first of these reforms is political, which, if we stop to think about it, was a kick in the chest for the Brazilian right wing, accustomed as it is to supplying the slush funds of candidates from urban and rural businessmen. The truth is that the people's lives have improved in the last eleven years, and they want more. And the demonstrations said exactly that: "We want more!" And the people will have it, because Brazil is carrying out an inexorable process, which is the pursuit of its social and economic development. We are the sixth largest GDP in the world, as well as respected abroad. The people ask and demand, and they will get the answer in the form of changes and reforms.

The government and society can no longer equivocate about the facts and events. The right wing, in bad faith and ridiculously, tried to appropriate the voice of the streets, but it is the left that is organic, historically embedded and established in organized society. Make no mistake. Therefore, this is the path the reforms will follow: the path proposed and debated with a left-wing and labor government. After all, we want a just and democratic Brazil for the people to live in. The reforms will come.

From now on, we will see if the right-wing parties and the media barons of private businesses are truly in favor of change in Brazil. The conservatives tried to shoot at what they saw and hit what they didn't see: the plebiscite and the government's call for organized society and the people to decide on political reform. Change will undoubtedly help Brazil get back on track and improve its political, party, and electoral system, and, evidently, favor the election of responsible and committed politicians.

In turn, political reform will allow Brazil to better combat corruption and, consequently, have access to infrastructure that benefits everyone, in addition to providing society with better quality education and health systems, as demanded by the protesters. Therefore, let's go to the plebiscite and not forget to observe those who prefer, for convenience and self-interest, a referendum. That way we will know who is acting in good faith and who is acting in bad faith; who is sincere and who is false. That's it.