The political crisis hasn’t stopped Bolsonaro’s pursuit to go ahead with the counterreforms

The political crisis hasn’t stopped Bolsonaro’s pursuit to go ahead with the counterreforms

Break and overcome the class conciliation policy it’s a must

Masses 629, Editorial, February 21, 2021

The most recent event that shook institutional relations was the arrest of ultra-rightist deputy Daniel Silveira (PSL). There was no way for the ministers of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to remain passive, in the face of the exhortation of the most radical of the Bolsonarists to the Armed Forces, to reissue the AI-5 of the military dictatorship, and thus close the Court. However, what moved Minister Alexandre de Moraes the most was the accusations of corruption among the members of the STF.

Silveira asked for some ministers’ banking secrets to be broken, including that of Moraes. The dormant denunciation made by the ex-congressman and president of the PTB, Roberto Jefferson, that Moraes was linked, when he was a lawyer, to the PCC came up. Jefferson was convicted of injury to pay a fine. Old wounds from the conflicts between bourgeois political figures have surfaced.

Silveira’s arrest triggered the discussion about freedom of expression and the inviolability of the parliamentary mandate. Bolsonarists sought an agreement that would not fail to punish the deputy, but that would not go as far as prison. In fact, due to the guarantees of parliamentary immunity, the STF could not arrest him, since Silveira exercised the right of expression, conferred by the own bourgeois laws. The new presidents of the Senate and the Federal Chamber were faced with the dilemma of acting against the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court or abiding by it, even if violating parliamentary immunity. The best solution would be to avoid a clash between the powers, especially in the conditions of the sanitary and economic crisis.

The Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, intervened to put a damper on things. Bolsonaro is preparing a new offensive against the exploited. Financial capital has just realized its purpose of giving “autonomy to the Central Bank”. The huge public debt must continue to prevail over monetary policy. Basically, it means reducing the interference of the government and the National Congress to the debt and interest management as much as possible, bearing the forceful fiscal measures.

Bolsonaro and the majority of the National Congress main goal is to move forward with labor reform, approving administrative reform, and boosting privatizations. The bourgeois opposition remains attached to the government’s indisposition, malpractice and “negationism” in the face of the pandemic. Now, it is no longer a matter of the bourgeois policy of social isolation, but of the National Immunization Plan. The Amazon tragedy gave arms to the opposition. Everything indicates that Bolsonaro managed to avoid it, placing the entire responsibility on General Minister Pazzuelo. Bolsonaro played with the armament decree, calculating that this is the best time, since the bourgeois opposition remains in quarantine, and is not willing to mobilize sectors of the middle class to the streets.

Countless requests for impeachment remain shelved. The defeat of the opposition in the election of the presidency of the Senate and of the Chamber evidenced that the banner of the impeachment does not in fact threaten Bolsonaro. It is nothing more than oppositional propaganda, which serves to prepare for the presidential elections of 2022, and to divert the attention of the masses from their real problems.

The CUT, the Popular Brazil Front and the  People Without Fear Front – directed by the PT and PSOL, surrounded by left-wing currents – organize the union bureaucracy and petty-bourgeois activism car demonstrations to call for “impeachment and vaccination for all”. This typical form of bourgeois politics is advised by the union leaderships, as a means of spreading the political propaganda that takes place in virtual media.

Such distraction exposes the impotence of the bureaucratic and reformist opposition to Bolsonaro’s militaristic and fascist government, as well as subservience to the National Congress. The most elementary needs of the working class and the other exploited have been marginalized by unions, centrals and movements. The wave of layoffs, the growth of unemployment and the increase in misery are just statistical reasons and hypocritical complaints against the increase in “social inequalities”. The leadership closed the doors of the unions and ran to complain about the government on social media, and, at most, to promote car demonstrations and banging pots and pans.

There is no greater symptom of rotting bureaucracy, leftist reformist and centrist parties, than the attitude of ignoring Ford’s closure. Nothing has been done against the multinational capital. Except in words, to show that the automaker benefited from the State, the Country and the workers, to then close its doors and throw thousands into unemployment. This miserable position of the leaderships – of PT, PCdoB, Centrals, Popular Brazil Front and lPeople Without Fear Front – is responsible, both for the disarming of the working class, and for the preservation of the Bolsonaro government, which is always decomposing and recomposing. The task of the class-conscious vanguard is to organize the struggle for a united front, which mobilizes the exploited in defense of its demands program and its own power strategy.