Dilma Is Not Being Attacked Because Of Her Mistakes, But For Her Right Doings

Photo: Mídia NINJA

By Paulo Pimenta (Worker’s Party) – Brazil’s Congressman

What happened last Sunday in Brazil’s Congress confirmed what we have already been denouncing: Dilma is not going through an impeachment, but through a coup. With 367 votes in favor of the admissibility of the impediment process of the President, the House of Representatives made its mark in history, for what its Congressmen will feel ashamed in the future. In fact, many of them already seem to feel that way.

Dilma is not being attacked because of her mistakes, but for her right doings. One of the President’s main virtues lies on her demonstrated ability to change the relations amongst the government, Brazilian parties and Congress.  The President does not adopt old political practices and does not give in for speculative attacks. She does not negotiate government positions with corrupt politicians and is into the game of “anything goes” to save her term. She is facing a coup in the Legislative exactly because of hers honest behavior.

The present composition of Brazil’s House of Representatives has 198 deputies in their first term. Most of them ignore the political deals previously made between their parties and the government. They act individually and reflect the utilitarianism of the parties they are part of: they are not guided by any ideological view or by any society project.  They only seek for their own survival in institutional politics, for the spotlights and, thus, end up acting as a “microparty”. The recent approval of a project which forbids corporate financing of political campaigns made this situation even worse. Forbidden to count on corporate resources, what is left to these parliamentarians is to fight for government positions.

If, on the one hand, these deputies could not count on Rousseff to this, on the other, they found the perfect partners: Eduardo Cunha, Michel Temer and Eliseu Padilha, all of them willing, each one for their own reasons, to make room for these utilitarian relations between representatives and government. Cunha needed to be absolved in the Ethics Committee – where he is charged for billionaire embezzlement and of hiding funds in Switzerland. In exchange for absolution, Cunha accepted to open the impeachment process against the President. Michel Temer, in his turn, guided by the desire to be president, but sure that he would not be able to make it through the popular vote, was the easiest bridge that the government opponents could build to get to the Worker’s Parties destruction and to depose the government. Finally, Eliseu Padilha, lifted by Temer to the position of government’s political articulator, he had a map of all government positions: it was the “El Dorado” for those parties which have a mere utilitarian relations with the parliamentarians. If they could not negotiate a position with Dilma, they took even more than what was asked for with Padilha.

Cunha, Temer and Padilha are the expression of these utilitarian relations that many politicians establish with politics, and are in consonance with the parliamentarians who compose the current term. They now succeed in their plans exactly because of it.

The expectation for last Sunday voting was that the parliamentarians would say “yes” or “no” whether they agreed – or not – to the accusation that Dilma had committed a liability crime (the only Constitutional possibility in which the President can be charged in Brazil). But, instead of doing that, they said things like “yes for my family”, “yes for my group of friends “, “yes for my wife, for my children “, “yes for my mother’s birthday”, “yes for my city”. They voted to be on the television, to look good on the spotlight, but not to judge whether a liability crime was committed –or not – by the President. We are certain that the crime was not discussed because there was not any crime, in fact. This process is a scam, a coup.

The defeat of democracy for personal interests, at least in this first battle, reveals a crisis of our political system, which is very often used for utilitarian reasons. It reveals that the coalition presidentialism is not the key to overcome the moment we are facing now.

The key, as many people claime, is to bet on the left-wing political project, to focus on social issues and to talk to the people who elected our government and, still now, support us.

The balance of this process for the left-wing movements also points to this very same direction. Despite the many ideological, political and methodological differences, left-wing movements have shown an ability to get together, what can be decisive to avoid a coup. The creation of democratic committees around the country – that unite not only the existing left-wing militancy, but also new sectors of society – demonstrate the popular resistance to the coup, and can be the last thorn in the scammer’s side .

There is still a lot of fighting to be done. We will resist until the end. No coup in Brazil!

Paulo Pimenta (Worker’s Party)
Brazil’s Congressman