by Joao
Pedro Stedile
It only took
a few hours or days for the provisional government of the
coup-plotters to install themselves and demonstrate their intentions
through the composition of its cabinet, the plans it has announced
and its public declarations.
The Senate
only forced president Dilma Rousseff to temporarily step aside and
provisionally installed Michel Temer. According to some lawyers, the
constitution stipulates that the vice-president cannot reshuffle the
cabinet. He should be limited to administrative acts until the merits
of the case against Dilma are decided.But the last thing that the
coup-plotters and their accomplices in the Federal Supreme Court are
doing is respecting the constitution. At the moment, anything goes.
As [former president Ignacio] Lula [da Silva] said, it is as if “you
went on holidays and left someone to provisionally look after your
house, and they sold it and remodelled everything inside.”
The cabinet
of the coup-plotters is a joke. A genuine festival of thieves. All
men, white, hypocrites and rotten. The Rede Globo [media
conglomerate] campaigned intensely over the last few months,
insinuating that president Dilma should be deposed due to the levels
of corruption in her government. The petty bourgeoisie that mobilised
in the streets clamoured for the return of the military dictatorship
to put an end to the corrupt PTers.
Well, among
Temer’s newly appointed ministers, there are no less than seven who
are currently facing accusations as a result of Operation Lava Jato
(Car Wash) and other anti-corruption investigations. As politician
Ciro Gomes said, “they handed over the government to a trade
union of criminals” and no one had the courage to put them on
trial.
The
measures announced or already taken by the coup government are a
tragedy for the life and future of the Brazilian people. But they are
coherent with its neoliberal plan to reduce the cost of labour, hand
over our resources, privatize what they can and redirect public funds
that were going to education, health and social security to business
owners. As the investigator and economist Marcio Pochmann warned,
“what is at stake is the private appropriation of public funds
that are the equivalent of up to 10% of GDP!”
They
have already proposed a provisional measure that allows for the
potential privatization of all state companies, such as Petrobras,
electricity companies, ports and airports. They will probably start
with the electricity companies and the pre-salt reserves – recently
found reserves of deep-water oil. In response, there will be a
national protest on June 6 in Rio de Janiero to denounce this attack
on our national sovereignty.
In terms
of social security, they want to impose a minimum retirement age of
65 for men and women in the countryside and the city, and a pension
no longer tied to the minimum wage. This would be a tragedy for the
working class.
In
terms of healthcare, they have announced cuts to the Universal Health
System (SUS) and the end of the More Doctors program, that covers 50
million poor Brazilians living in areas where no white coats had gone
before. They are even talking about cutting the Emergency Mobile
Attention System (SAMU).
In
terms of interest rates, nothing has been said about the R$500
billion designated each year to bankers through the payment of the
internal debt. This is why they put two bankers in charge of looking
after the chicken coop: Henrique Meirelles (Minister of the Treasury)
and Illan Goldfain (Central Bank), whose family lives in Israel
because they view Brazil as a dangerous country…. Poor us, the 210
million humans who live here.
In
agriculture and land reform, as well as the social measures outlined
above that affect the poorest in the countryside, they had no
problems with closing the Ministry for Agricultural Development and
its programs that attended to peasants.
We
can all agree that the coup government has been didactic. It has made
it clear to the people what its interests are and how it will act.
That is why all the popular movements and organisations that are part
of the Popular Brazil Front and the People Without Fear Front, along
with other coalitions, have united behind the slogan “No to the
coup, Temer Out!” None of us will accept a process of negotiation
or sit at the table with representatives of an illegitimate and
unpatriotic coup government.
Thankfully,
Brazilian society and the international community has quickly
understood the nature of this illegitimate government. And the slogan
“No to the coup, Temer out!” has reverberated in numerous events,
public acts and ceremonies.
Outside
the country, hundreds of protests have occurred in front of Brazilian
embassies. The international media that continues to follow the
manual of listening to both sides, demoralized the local media by
denouncing the character of the coup in editorials and news items.
Personalities
from around the world have spoken out. Pope Francis drew attention to
the “soft coups” underway in some countries, although he did not
directly cite Brazil. The respected US academic Noam Chomsky, as well
as Nobel prize winners such as Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Rigoberta
Menchu, and even artists at the Cannes film festival have expressed
their solidarity and denounced the coup.
In
Brazil, public protests have multiplied as diverse sectors take to
the streets, including high school students and artists and
intellectuals who for the first time occupied more than 20 offices of
the National Arts Foundation (Funarte) across the country, forcing
the coup-plotters to reinstate the Ministry of Culture. Young people
have returned to the streets to protest.
And
where are those who supported the coup? The “greens and yellows”
against corruption? They are embarrassed, at home, as they helped
hand over the cheese to the Jucas, Padilhas, Gedeis and other
specialists in public funds. They have disappeared.
Certainly,
from now on the popular mobilisations will increase in size and
numbers of sectors mobilized. The Popular Brazil Front has organized
a calendar of mobilisations and activities across the country for the
next few months. Within the trade union movement, the drums have
begun to sound in preparation for a general strike, paralysing
productive activities in opposition to the measures of the coup
government.
Moreover,
solidarity with president Dilma is increasing, despite the various
criticisms we have made in regards to the past few years of her term.
She has been invited to participate in numerous mass activities in
Brazil, where we will loudly and clearly say that 54 million voters –
the majority of the Brazilian people – elected her to govern the
country until 2018.
Source:
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