Fernando Alcoforado *
Ciro Gomes, candidate for the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil for the PDT (Democratic Labor Party), is the best candidate because he has a set of proposals with which, as he says, Brazil will celebrate a “national development project” in antithesis to the failed neoliberal economic model in force implanted in 1990 by the Fernando Collor government and maintained by the Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), Lula, Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer governments. Ciro Gomes defends the need to recover the idea of a national development project from its strategic coordination. It shows the need to sustain Brazil’s balance of payments. He says that the Brazilian economy should be based on its currency, the Real. He says that he cannot finance consumption in Brazil based on the Dollar as it is today because it does not generate currency stability or a better living condition for the Brazilian population and will not generate the jobs that Brazil needs for 1 million and 700 thousand workers who come every year to the job market, plus the 15 to 20 million unemployed that the next president is likely to receive.
For Ciro Gomes, the national development project that he defends aims to overcome misery. To reach it, his tactic is to industrialize the country. This project would be enough for ten years. There would be a new cycle of import substitution focused on four large blocs in which Brazil already has national savings applied, but is disappearing. The first of these is the national oil and gas complex – hence Ciro considers the crime of lese-motherland the delivery of the of the pre-salt oil layer to foreign interests. Its proposal is to continue supplying the domestic market and exporting the surplus as a means to mitigate imbalances in the trade balance. The second block is the health industrial complex, to take the country out of international dependence on drugs, equipment, prostheses, diagnostic technology – many of which, he said, with a patent expired. Ciro says that we can establish in the BRIC countries a regime of commercial preference in some sectors, such as drugs.
The third block of import substitution concerns the agribusiness industry complex that is the most competitive in the planet and has 40% of the production costs in the import of inputs, such as fertilizers, agrochemicals and equipment that should be produced internally according to Ciro Gomes. The fourth and final block is the industrial defense complex that Ciro Gomes considers fundamental to break with the current external dependence. Ciro Gomes states that Brazil processes its military information and communications through US satellites that it considers unbelievable. Brazilian ships are guided by a North American GPS system. Ciro Gomes believes that the BRIC countries can overcome Brazil’s deficiency with technology transfer. In developing technology for satellites in Brazil, it is possible to develop skills for a thousand uses of microelectronics, rockets, fuels, and to create financing mechanisms for defense enterprises. But to make GPS, Ciro says that Brazil has to have aerospace dominance. Europeans are doing, and also China.
The financial resources for the project, according to Ciro Gomes, would come with the reduction of the Selic interest rate, the basic rate of the Brazilian economy, to avoid the expansion of the domestic public debt whose interest payment and amortization is committing more than 50% of the Brazilian government budget. Ciro Gomes affirms that we will have no other purpose but to grow. Ciro Gomes says that he will reduce the interest rate constantly to a compatible level and that he will propose a change project in the tax system. One of the first measures, he said, would be to propose revocation of FHC’s unbelievable legislation that repealed taxation on profits and dividends. According to Ciro, the industrialized countries of the OECD charge on profits. All countries except Lithuania and Brazil. For the above, Ciro Gomes correctly proposes the adoption of a national development project for Brazil contemplating, among other measures, the adoption of the tax reform, as well as the reduction of the Selic rate in order to curb the growth of the public debt that consumes more than 50% of the Brazilian government budget for payment. The interview of Ciro Gomes in the Roda Viva Program that can be accessed through the website <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwHGTQ4twqk> is illustrative of his government project.
It should be noted that Ciro Gomes is the most capable candidate of bringing together the nation around his national development project, besides being more viable electorally among the other candidates for the Presidency of the Republic who propose something similar like Manuela D’Ávila, candidate of PC do B, which also proposes a national development project in opposition to the neoliberal economic model responsible for the economic devastation experienced by Brazil at the time, and Álvaro Dias from Partido Podemos who proposes structural reforms in the country, including political reform. Jair Bolsonaro demonstrates in his pronouncements unprepared to govern Brazil for not understanding economics and not pointing out the concrete solutions that lead to overcoming the current crisis. If the candidates conservatives João Amoêdo of Partido Novo, Geraldo Alckmim of the PSDB, Marina Silva of Rede Sustentabilidade and Henrique Meirelles of the MDB are elected they should maintain the neoliberal economic model. If conservative elites defenders of the maintenance of the “status quo” unite around a candidate (Alckmim or Meirelles), there is no other way for the progressive forces opposed to neoliberalism unless it unites around the most viable candidate that is Ciro Gomes.
Ciro Gomes will only succeed, however, in the Presidency of the Republic if he succeeds in the composition of a coalition of political forces committed to the economic, social and political progress of Brazil and the fight against corruption and structure his ministry with the presence of personalities committed to the construction of a new political, economic and social order in Brazil that corresponds to the interests of the great majority of the Brazilian people. The new government should, simultaneously with the work of recovery of the Brazilian economy devastated from 1990 to the present moment by neoliberal governments, call a Constituent Assembly to correct the distortions of the 1988 Constitution and make it possible to establish new directions for Brazil, not only in the plans economic, political and social, but also ethical and moral. Parallel to this action, the first steps should be taken to promote the resumption of the country’s development with: 1) the adoption during 10 years of the national development model of selective and controlled opening of the national economy along the lines of those adopted by Japan, South Korea and China in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, respectively, which had the highest rates of economic growth after World War II; and then (2) the adoption of social democracy along the lines of the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) which have the highest rates of simultaneous economic and social progress and sustainable development policy.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 13 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
Site Title 