Fernando Alcoforado*
Brazil is in danger because the Bolsonaro government is producing a gigantic backspace political, economic, social and environmental. On the political level, the Bolsonaro government threatens democracy with the escalation of fascism with all its nefarious consequences. On the economic front, it jeopardizes the country’s growth and development through the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. At the social level, it attacks the Brazilian society with the adoption of neo-liberal anti-social policies that contribute to the worsening of the social situation of the great majority of the Brazilian population. On the environmental front, it adopts a policy that contributes to aggression against nature and threatens not to comply with the Paris Agreement to combat global warming.
Democracy is threatened by the Bolsonaro government because an alliance was formed between the conservative elite and the fascists that was consummated with the victory of Jair Bolsonaro for the Presidency of the Republic who has a typically fascist government proposal because his speech is based on the explicit cult of order, state violence, authoritarian government practices, social disregard for vulnerable and fragile groups, and anti-communism. The conservative elite and the fascists took control of the country with the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the elections of October of 2018.
History tells us that once this alliance between the conservative elite and the fascists is formed and succeeds in pursuit of power, there is no longer any way to stop it. The alliance between the conservative elite and the fascists can destroy the last vestiges of a democratic government and result in the end of representative democracy in Brazil. Despite Bolsonaro’s assertion that he will respect the Constitution and the Laws of the Country, the threat to the current democratic order in Brazil is explicit in his antidemocratic campaign discourse and his authoritarian attitudes during his first days of government.
The political objective of Jair Bolsonaro is the conquest of total power encompassing the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary to put into practice his fascist project of government. The escalation of fascism is already a concrete fact, widespread, rooted and may become irreversible in Brazil at the present moment if there is no resistance. In order to avoid the end of the current democratic system in Brazil, it is not enough to rely on the republican institutions that can undergo changes contrary to the interests of the great majority of the population through draft laws and amendments to the Constitution by the Bolsonaro government.
The Brazilian economy is threatened in its growth and development because, unfortunately, the Bolsonaro government does not adopt any strategy that contributes to the achievement of economic objectives that are fundamental to: 1) reactivate the country’s economic growth; 2) to face the ongoing trade war in the world economy; and, 3) take measures to prevent the country from suffering the consequences of the inevitable explosion of the world debt bubble. The government’s top priority should be to promote the reactivation of the Brazilian economy that has been in recession for the past four years to rapidly reduce levels of unemployment and underutilization of the labor force in Brazil.
For the Brazilian economic system to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active population, the federal government must immediately implement a broad program of public infrastructure works (energy, transportation, housing, sanitation, etc.) with the support of the private sector to raise the employment and income levels of the population and, consequently, to promote the expansion of the consumption of the families resulting from the increase of the wage mass and the income of the companies with the investments in public works. The resources of the federal government to finance public works would be obtained by suspending the charges for the payment of interest on public debt after the renegotiation with its creditors. The public works program would increase productive capacity and increase investment in industry, contributing to the heating of commercial activity and services, as well as raising the levels of government tax collection.
In addition to the public works program, the federal government should elaborate an economic plan that will contribute to the reactivation of the Brazilian economy that presents a perspective for the population and the productive sectors to overcome the current crisis and resumption of growth and economic development. The development plan should guide and coordinate the country’s companies that, organized in networks and aided by trade, technology and credit policies, can compete successfully in the national and global economy. Taking into account the speech of the economy minister of the government Jair Bolsonaro, Paulo Guedes, who is a fundamentalist of neoliberalism hardly the Bolsonaro government will assume an active role as inducer of economic growth, elaborating a development plan with the adoption of the measures presented above to promote the reactivation of the economy and the increase of employment levels in Brazil.
Government’s priority number 2 should be to act to neutralize or minimize the effects of the ongoing trade war on the world economy that can slow down global growth, which could hurt peripheral countries such as Brazil, both in terms of exports , and in relation to economic growth. The government’s priority number 3 would be to strengthen the Brazilian economy that could be affected by the inevitable explosion of the world debt bubble because Brazil has an economic system extremely fragile by the crisis that broke out in 2014 and also by adopting since 1990 the neoliberal economic model that made it more vulnerable to the impacts of global economic crises. To minimize the impact on Brazil of the ongoing trade war in the world economy and the inevitable explosion of the world debt bubble, it is necessary to replace the neoliberal economic model that has been weakening the Brazilian economy since 1990 and, especially after 2014, by the national economic developmentalist model of selective opening of the Brazilian economy whose emphasis is focused on the development of the domestic market.
Brazilian society is threatened by the Bolsonaro government because it does nothing to solve the unemployment of the economically active population of the order of 13 million workers and its underutilization of the order of 28 million workers. In Brazil, with the Bolsonaro administration, there is no prospect of solving unemployment because the federal government will not take an active role as an inducer of economic growth to promote the reactivation of the economy and the increase of employment levels. The great majority of the Brazilian population faces enormous difficulties to survive with the mass unemployment that is registered in Brazil that affects the whole of Brazilian society.
What is happening is the worsening of the situation of the working class with the approval of the labor reform by the government Michel Temer and its maintenance by the government Jair Bolsonaro. The President of the Republic Jair Bolsonaro who voted as a federal deputy in favor of the labor reform that ended with 100 items of CLT, claims that it is better to have precarious employment than to have nothing. His proposal to combat the unemployment drama calls for the creation of a “green and yellow” labor portfolio with less labor rights. This proposal foresees that every young person entering the labor market will be able to choose between an employment contract based on the traditional blue work permit, which guarantees all labor rights, or opt for the green and yellow work portfolio, and with this, lose several labor rights. The approval of the Social Security reform proposed by the Bolsonaro government further aggravates the social situation of the Brazilian population because it results in losses of rights by the majority of the Brazilian population.
The environment of Brazil is threatened by the Bolsonaro government because it has been characterized by positions that are openly opposed to the defense of the environment and by showing total ignorance of the environmental issue. As one of the first measures of his government, he issued a letter determining the 90-day suspension of all agreements with NGOs, an illegal measure that he had to withdraw the next day. In a month and a half of government, his minister of the environment declared that climate change is an “academic” theme and a concern “for 500 years,” defended transgenic soybean plantations in indigenous lands and reduced controls on pesticides, in addition to saying that the blame for the increase in deforestation in the Amazon is the “pyrotechnics” of environmental monitoring and that climate conferences only serve to luxury vacations of public officials in Europe and that NGOs do “terrorism to sell a lecture.” In summary, regrettably, the Bolsonaro administration represents a true disgrace to the Brazilian environment.
Faced with the serious political, economic, social and environmental problems resulting from the disastrous action of the Bolsonaro government, the political forces that love democracy and economic and social progress and the environment must mobilize to face the Bolsonarist government policy with the implementation of the following measures:
1) In order to avoid the escalation of fascism and the establishment of an extreme right-wing dictatorship in Brazil, it is urgent to form an anti-fascist democratic front in the Parliament and in Civil Society to defend the Constitution of 1988 and to fight against the acts of the government that are contrary interests of the vast majority of the population and of Brazil.
2) In order to confront the neoliberal economic policy of the government, it is necessary that a political front be established in the Parliament and in Civil Society to mobilize the Brazilian population in defense of the country’s economic progress, demanding an end to the neoliberal economic model and fight against acts that are contrary to the interests of the vast majority of the population and of Brazil.
3) In order to combat the neoliberal anti-social government policy, there is no other action than to strengthen the trade union organizations which, together with civil society organizations, must fight to reverse the neoliberal, labor and Social Security, reforms recently approved through of its representatives in Parliament, demand the immediate reactivation of the Brazilian economy and, in the future, fight to change the correlation of forces in Parliament and elect a President of the Republic committed to the interests of the workers and development of Brazil.
4) Finally, in order to combat the disastrous environmental policy of the Bolsonaro government, it is necessary for environmental organizations to liaise with civil society organizations in general together with their representatives in Parliament to demand that the federal government comply with the Paris Agreement against global warming and fight against acts committed by the government harmful to the environment.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, 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 author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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