June 4th, 2010 – a political analysis from BRASIL

By Bruno Lima Rocha (political scientist and journalist) and Rafael Cavalcanti (student of journalist)

We have the impression that with this text, we will be challenged by the campaign teams of all presidential candidates, including themselves. If this is the price of intellectual honesty, it comes up cheap. The issue is the conceptual definition of left and terrorism. We see with deep regret (the terms are different, but here they do not fit) the rating of terrorist circulates abundantly by the Brazilian Internet, targeting the 44 million voters-users of the network. The term, associated with economist Dilma Vana Rousseff (Minister of Civil House of the current government) is, at worst, a historical injustice. And the absurdity does not stop there.

Let us begin by thinking of the left and then get to terrorism. To be or not fan of these matrices of thought implies that at least one is a critique of capitalism both in it's production mode and in it as a civilization milestone. Is not and never has been possible to affirm that position in the singular. There are lefts. These can be basic or statist federalism, parliamentary or rupture, or democratic centralist. There are hues among these stated positions, and each new issue legitimated by fighting and clashes, there is a struggle to set up marks on collective rights.

In our view, Roussef (candidate for the Workers Party - PT, the same as Lula) is not anything like that. Even if she does not admit it, she is a Keynesian nationalist, opting for the development of Brasil at the cost of pacts between classes and the strengthening of major economic groups in the country. It has both positive numbers from the government (irrefutable), as the huge volume of corporate mergers, the increased weight of the state in the Brazilian social organization and the disputed infrastructure projects, such as the Belo Monte power plant. Another economist, José Serra (candidate by the Brazilian Social Democratic Party - PSDB, the same of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso), has been adept this Keynesian pathway although now abandoned, but is now more right. Third name in surveys of voting intentions, the former environment minister, Marina Silva (former Environment Minister of Lula, a candidate for the Green Party - PV, left the PT in 2009 after 30 years of militancy in the acronym) even being in favor of inclusion, environmental sustainability and cultural diversity in this sense, neither is left.

Matrix of socialist thought running for the office of president, we have only two names, and with little focus. The first corresponds to a post-graduate degree in economics, the retired prosecutor Plinio de Arruda Sampaio (candidate for the Socialism and Freedom Party - PSOL, was affiliated with the PT 1980 to 2005) that, far from being a revolutionary, reformist advocates trigger and vindictive. The second is the metalworker and union leader Zé Maria (the Workers Party candidate Unified - PSTU, Trotskyist line Morenism, from Argentine Manuel Moreno). More politically aggressive than the PSOL, are also advocates strengthening the state benefit the working class. Ie, the left one sees represented by two positions and two models of reformist parties (type broad front, as the PSOL; or centralism, as is the case of PSTU). None of the three candidates can be marked today as being left under no known view.

About terrorism and other charges

Let us move to "terrorism" and of dubious accusations against the minister of Lula. Terror implies attacks against undetermined targets. The episode on Pump Riocentro (famous trial of two army officers in placing an explosive in Riocentro Pavilion during a concert celebrating Labor Day in Rio de Janeiro in 1981; that ended up going wrong when the bomb exploded in the lap of the military) would have been a terrorist act. Two militaries were blamed for it when in fact the action was ordered by the parallel of the military in counter-insurgency (known as the DOI-CODI). The same pattern was inconclusive terrorist attack on the Gasometer (gasworks) in Rio de Janeiro in 1968, which was looking to kill hundreds of thousands of people just for the government put the blame on so-called subversives. No guerrilla organization has operated this way. The only terror practiced in Brazilian soil was to state in 21 years of military dictatorship (1964-1985).

Dilma neither was a terrorist, but guerrilla. She fought against the dictatorship of way extinguished by subsequent Armed Revolutionary Vanguard Palmares (Palmares-VAR) guerrilla organization had even planned to hijack the then symbol of Brazilian economic miracle, professor Antônio Delfim Netto, nowadays a consultant for Lula. She behaved very well when fell prey to survive in the dungeons of Operation Bandeirantes (center of clandestine detention and torture in São Paulo) without saying a single name under savage torture. Jose Serra was a student leader, president of the National Union of Students (UNE) of the moment when the coup of 1964 (completed on April 1) and ended up exiled, after integrating the Popular Action (AP) political movement of Christian bias. The same crossed the path of exile Plinio de Arruda Sampaio, while the prison was the fate of Zé Maria already in the 80s. Marina Silva, in turn, was forged in political activism for social Acre, during the swan song of the dictatorial period. Too bad the respective fields of the top three alliances (Dilma, Sierra and Marina) in the polls do not respect their trajectories.

Thus we arrive at two conclusions. These five presidential candidates, with different levels of risk and commitment, had a good conduct before the regime of exception. And to the delight of the heirs of ARENA (civil political wing allied to the militaries) and widows of the dictatorship, the way the campaign is going, nobody will remember after the 2nd round last Sunday of October.

In time, Orlando Geisel, minister in chief of the Armed Forces when in the decree of the AI-5 (13th December 1968, when the regime decreed state of inner war), was the commander of state terrorism in Brazilian soil. Those who agreed not to revise the Amnesty Law, the act of acquitted for his crimes against humanity and undermines homeland. From hell or where else a man like him and others migt be, they are celebrating the Brazilian political campaign, for the shame of martyrs and all of the live people’s fighters.

Bruno Lima Rocha (blimarocha (at) gmail.com) is a political scientist (phd. And msc.), journalist (bsc.) and professor; Rafael Cavalcanti (butigahn (at) gmail.com) is a student of journalism and media activist. They produce the Brazilian and Latin American based political analysis website Estratégia & Análise (www.estrategiaeanalise.com.br).

Contacts: website – www.estrategiaeanalise.com.br / skype: bruno.lima.rocha / msn: blimarocha (at) hotmail.com