Fernando Alcoforado *
In an interview with Globo News, economist Paulo Guedes, who works as an economic mentor to Jair Bolsonaro, said he intends to sell all of the public assets in order to resolve the internal public debt issue. The privatization of public equity in Brazil, such as Petrobras, Eletrobras, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica Federal, etc., would not be enough to recover domestic public debt (R$ 3.78 trillion) because it has a lower total market value, in addition to represent a true attack on the country’s future insofar as it would weaken the Brazilian state’s ability to organize the country’s economic system. In addition, privatization would represent the denationalization of the Brazilian economy on a scale never seen in the history of Brazil because foreign capital would take possession of the privatized state enterprises. A future Bolsonaro government would thus mean a crime against homeland never practiced in the whole history of Brazil.
Another initiative of a future Bolsonaro government would mean an attack on human rights because the candidate himself stated in Araçatuba in the interior of São Paulo on 23/8 that he would not pass on Union resources to the movements and human rights organizations of the Country, which, as he classified, are a “disservice to our Brazil”. Jair Bolsonaro said absurdly that his decision is part of the strategies to reduce crime in the Country (!!!). On a sound car, the PSL candidate also said that in his possible term there will be no “human rights politicking”, stating that “this banditry will die because he will not send resources from the Union to them,” he added.
It is unacceptable that Brazil should be governed by a President of the Republic whose objective is to lead, unpatriotically, to the dismantling of the public heritage of the Country with its denationalization and which disdains human rights organizations that fight against attacks imposed on human beings. In addition to the neoliberal privatization program of the Bolsonaro government, we would also have the human rights violation that would, in practice, mean a major political regression. Bolsonaro’s government program with these characteristics would further divide Brazil’s population because it would lead the Country to the confrontation among government and civil society that would not accept such a regression. In essence, a Bolsonaro government would escalate political and social conflicts that need to be avoided at all costs because they would threaten political stability and social peace in Brazil.
Instead of privatizing and denationalizing all public assets to solve the problem of internal public debt, the federal government should renegotiate with national and foreign banks (creditors of 55% of public debt), investment funds (creditors of 21% of public debt), pension funds (creditors of 16% of public debt) and non-financial corporations (creditors of 8% of public debt) reducing the expenses with payment of debt service by lengthening the term of payment of interest and debt amortizations of public debt. Without this solution, there will be a bankruptcy of the Brazilian economic system with the bankruptcy of banks and the confiscation of the savings of individuals.
Besides not presenting a viable solution to the issue of internal public debt, the candidate Bolsonaro proposes nothing to solve the problem of mass unemployment that tends to lead the country to an unprecedented social upheaval. There is a lack of work today for 27.636 million Brazilians by the Quarterly National Household Sample Survey, compiled by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The solution of unemployment in Brazil depends on the reactivation of the Brazilian economy, which depends to a great extent on the renegotiation with the creditors, aiming at lengthening the payment period of the public debt burden for the federal government to have the necessary resources for public investments, especially infrastructure and then immediately adopt the measures described below:
- Elaboration of a program of works on economic infrastructure (energy, transport and communications) and social infrastructure (education, health, housing, basic sanitation and environment) that requires resources of around R$ 2.5 trillion.
- Public / private partnership in the execution of economic and social infrastructure works.
- Elaboration of an industrial development program that replaces imports and is aimed at exports to reactivate the Brazilian economy.
- Raising public savings by increasing public revenues and reducing government costs so that it has the resources to invest in economic and social infrastructure.
- Increase of the public collection with the taxation of the great fortunes, the dividends of individuals and the banks.
- Reduction of government costs with the elimination of superfluous expenses in all the powers of the Republic and the reduction of public agencies and commissioned personnel.
- Drastic reduction of bank interest rates to encourage private investment in economic and social infrastructure works, industry and the economy in general.
It should be noted that a Brazilian government under Bolsonaro’s direction would escalate the confrontation between left and right extremists, just as it would be with a Lula government or its candidate supported by him. The victory of Bolsonaro or Lula or his replacement may lead the Country to political and social upheaval. History has proven that, from the confrontation between the forces of left and right, the implantation of dictatorships, respectively, of left or right, can result. To illustrate, the confrontation between left and right forces in tsarist Russia in 1917, China in 1949 and in Cuba in 1959 resulted in the establishment of dictatorships. The confrontation between left and right forces in Italy and Germany, after World War I, resulted respectively in the fascist and Nazi dictatorships, in Spain in 1936 resulted in the Franco dictatorship and in Chile in 1973 resulted in the dictatorship of Pinochet. In Brazil, after the so-called Communist Intent in 1935, Getulio Vargas gave a self-coup in 1937 with the establishment of the New State dictatorship, and the João Goulart government was overthrown in 1964, resulting in a 21-year military dictatorship.
The only scenario that would prevent the triggering of violence between left and right with the consequent implementation of dictatorships would occur if the Brazilian people were to vote in the elections next October a candidate for President of the Republic who had the capacity to bring together the Brazilian nation around a common project of political, economic and social development that should result from a broad debate in an exclusive National Constituent Assembly that the future president of the Republic would call after his election. The National Constituent Assembly would serve not only to deliberate on the economic, political and social future of Brazil but, above all, to celebrate a social pact and thereby to make political stability and social peace overlap with the social conflict that would result if this path isn´t adopted.
* 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.
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