THE PRESIDENT THAT BRAZIL NEEDS

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to present the profile of the President of the Republic that Brazil needs in the current historical moment. This article aims to offer its readers what I consider essential for a president of the Republic of Brazil to exercise this role in the current situation of Brazilian life. The future president of Brazil must prioritize the solution of social problems that will only be solved by solving economic problems which will require the Brazilian State to take the lead role, unlike the impotent Brazilian State it has been transformed into since 1990 with the adoption in Brazil of the model of neoliberal society. Without the leading role of the Brazilian State, the gigantic economic and social problems and also the serious environmental problems will not be resolved. The future president of Brazil must use the Brazilian State to create the conditions to promote the country’s development on new bases diametrically opposed to those that prevailed from 1990 to the present moment, which led to its social, economic and environmental devastation.

The future President that Brazil needs is that, among other objectives, he must be able to urgently meet the most pressing needs of the vast majority of the Brazilian population, which are the increase in employment with their labor rights guaranteed, social assistance to the unemployed, the increase in the population’s very debased income, access to their own home for the poor population with the necessary infrastructure, the provision of guaranteed social assistance to homeless populations, overcoming the endemic hunger suffered by the Brazilian population and the provision of public and universal quality education and health and social security services for the entire population. These are the conditions for him to be worthy of the trust of the suffering Brazilian people and to win the next presidential elections. To win the presidential election, the candidate must demonstrate that he will fulfill this fundamental promise, among others, which are also important.

The future President that Brazil needs must demonstrate that he has the unwavering purpose of helping all the socially disinherited who have been abandoned by the Brazilian government, especially in recent years. Among the socially disinherited in Brazil are the unemployed, which today total 13.5 million Brazilians. Social disinherited are the underutilized population, that is, the unemployed who work less than they could and people who could work but no longer look for a job, reaching 32.9 million people. Other social disinherits are also the 34.7 million people in informal work, that is, workers without a formal contract, corresponding to 40% of the labor market, according to the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD Contínua). Other social disinherits are the poor who earn 35 times less than the rich, according to the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad Contínua). Social disinherited are the population that is situated in poverty and extreme poverty that, in Brazil, according to the most recent data from the IBGE, corresponds to 52 million inhabitants, of which 13.5 million people are in extreme poverty. Other social disinherited people are also homeless people in Brazil who are approximately 221,869 people according to the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA). The socially disinherited in Brazil are also those who do not have homes that do not enjoy the right to housing, which totaled 5.8 million homes in 2019, of which 79% were concentrated in low-income families.

The future President that Brazil needs must demonstrate that he has the irrevocable purpose of reversing the very serious social situation of the Brazilian people, especially the social disinherited described above, which is desperate because it was further aggravated during the Bolsonaro government, considering that it is perceived in Brazil from January 2019, the institutionalization of violations of civil liberties and fundamental rights. The federal government’s initiatives with bills, provisional measures and decrees, added to the declarations and attitudes coming from Bolsonaro and his ministers, create a serious environment to encourage social violence and authoritarianism. There was also the dismantling of workers’ freedom of organization, which intensified with the enactment of MP 873, which arbitrarily prohibited the payment of membership dues based on payroll, changing provisions of the CLT and Law No. 8,112/90. The Social Security reform, sent by the Bolsonaro government to Congress and approved, reduced pension and retirement amounts for workers in the private sector and for employees of the Union. The transition rules were tougher because there was an increase in the contribution ranges of workers and the Minimum retirement age was raised for both women (62 years old) and men (65 years old).

Add to all this the Bolsonaro government’s attacks on professors, universities, science and technology, the media and journalists, against the right to demonstrate and organize society, and social participation in discussions, decisions and in the monitoring of public policies with the purpose of restricting democracy in Brazil. The extinction of Participatory Government Councils that formulated public policies in various ministries and federal administrative bodies demonstrates the Bolsonaro government’s contempt for the participation of society in its decisions. Attacks on legal institutions and threats to re-enact authoritarian acts of the military dictatorship have also been recurrent in the Bolsonaro government, which is characterized by its disdain for fundamental rights provided for in the 1988 Constitution, its detachment from democracy and the lack of respect with which it addresses itself to broad social sectors. Another example of the Bolsonaro government’s contempt for the social situation of the population concerns the disastrous public health policy adopted, which is manifested in the fact that Brazil has failed to combat the spread of the new Coronavirus with the Bolsonaro government making the Ministry of Health inoperative and acting against all measures put in place by governors and mayors to combat the spread of the virus. The lack of national coordination by the Bolsonaro government in combating the spread of the new Coronavirus was the main responsible for the high number of deaths in Brazil. The Bolsonaro government continues today to attack public health, disregarding technical determinations and the experiences of other countries.

The future President that Brazil needs must commit, primarily, as a candidate, to reversing all the social ills generated by the Bolsonaro government and to eradicate from the country all the neoliberal measures that are contrary to the interests of the people, national companies and the Brazilian nation imposed by the different Brazilian governments since 1990. Without the extirpation of the social ills generated by the Bolsonaro government and the neoliberal measures adopted in Brazil since 1990, the economic, social and environmental problems of Brazil will not be resolved. This is the condition without which we will continue to live with the evils that have affected our country since 1990 and, above all, during the Bolsonaro government, which incorporated yet another aggravating factor by attacking the democratic system implemented in Brazil since 1988 with his intention to implement a fascist dictatorship. The future President that Brazil needs must therefore also commit to defending the principles of the democratic Constitution of 1988. Brazil and the world can no longer coexist with neoliberal globalization because of political, economic, social and environmental impact caused by it. It is necessary to put a stop to neoliberalism.

The future President that Brazil needs must also commit to the fight for the end of neoliberal globalization responsible for the ills that affect Brazil and the vast majority of countries in the world. Brazil and all peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of world capitalism will only overcome their dependence on neoliberal globalization, not only with the political, economic and social changes carried out internally, but also with the outbreak of a world revolution that promotes the construction of a new world economic and political order diametrically opposed to neoliberal globalization. The future President that Brazil needs must commit to fight for the convening of a World Forum for Peace and the Progress of Humanity through which the objectives and strategies of a world movement for the constitution of a world democratic government and a world parliament should be debated and established aimed at sensitizing all peoples to make a reality a world in which prevail freedom, equality and fraternity in every country in the world and international peace and progress for all humanity. To be successful, the political, economic and social changes carried out in each country must occur simultaneously with a world revolution.

The future President that Brazil needs must necessarily demonstrate convincingly that he has a plan to be put into practice that aims to meet the expectations of the broadest layers of the Brazilian population. This plan must be capable of reactivating the Brazilian economy, raising the population’s employment and income levels, meeting the needs of the populations that are socially disinherited today, and to overcome the country’s economic, scientific and technological dependence in relation to the outside. These are the conditions that I consider essential for the future president of Brazil to win the support of expressive layers of the population and succeed in executing his government plan. The future President that Brazil needs must assume the power to promote the necessary political, economic and social changes and not to reconcile with neoliberalism and maintain the status quo as has been happening since 1990. In the absence of a candidate who meets all of the above conditions, I will vote for the candidate who meets the greatest number of these conditions. If there is no candidate who meets any of the conditions described above, but who defends democracy, I will vote for him when facing Bolsonaro in the second round of elections to avoid the continuation of the barbarism that plagues Brazil. At the moment, I only have two certainties: 1) I will oppose the permanence of Jair Bolsonaro as president of the Republic to prevent him from continuing to transform Brazil into a scorched earth situation; and, 2) I will not vote for any candidate that proposes to keep Brazil devastated by neoliberalism.

* Fernando Alcoforado, 82, 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), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019) and A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021) .