Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate that the 2022 elections are decisive for the future of Brazil because the Brazilian people will have to decide between the values of civilization and democracy or those of barbarism and dictatorship. It should be noted that Civilization is considered the most advanced stage that a human society can reach from a political, economic, social, cultural, scientific and technological point of view. Democracy is the political regime in which sovereignty is exercised by the people. Citizens are the holders of power and entrust part of that power to the State so that it can organize society. Democracy is a political regime in which all eligible citizens participate equally — directly or through elected representatives — in proposing, developing and creating laws, exercising the power of governance through universal suffrage. The opposite of Civilization is Barbarism, which is the condition of what is wild, cruel, inhuman and coarse, that is, who or what is considered barbaric that attacks political, economic, social, cultural, scientific and technological progress. Barbarism has always been characterized throughout human history by groups that use force and cruelty to achieve their goals. The opposite of democracy is Dictatorship, which is a governmental regime in which all the powers of the State are concentrated in an individual, a group or a party. The dictator does not admit opposition to his actions and ideas, and has a large part of the decision-making power. It is an undemocratic regime in which the population does not participate.
There are some generally accepted elements of what would make a civilized and democratic society: 1) provide guaranteed security for all citizens who should not fear the loss of their lives or physical harm; 2) provide medical care of the best possible quality to all members of society; 3) grant access to food and water for all citizens so that no person goes hungry or thirsty; 4) provide basic housing conditions for all citizens; 5) have a democratic legislative system whose laws are established to preserve the well-being of the population; 6) provide an education system that guarantees equal access to high-level education for all people in order to make its population highly educated; 7) defend the environment; and, 8) ensure for the population freedom of thought, belief, religion, affiliation and expression and the right to participate in government decisions. The term barbarism means a rupture with the moral standards that regulate life in society and social controls based on the foundations of civilization, giving rise to unbridled violence and contempt for democracy and for the human being with the implantation of a dictatorship. The great challenge facing Brazil in the contemporary era is to ensure that, after the 2022 elections, civilization and democracy prevail over barbarism and the Bolsonaro dictatorship.
In Brazil, year after year, decade after decade, barbarism and contempt for human beings have increased, and there seems to be no limit to this phenomenon. Barbarism has increased enormously during the Bolsonaro government because its economic policy has been disastrous in adopting the principles of the most radical neoliberalism seeking to dismantle the Brazilian developmental state built since 1930 by Getúlio Vargas and maintained by other rulers, its economic policy contributed to the denationalization of the Brazilian economy and the deindustrialization of the country, its employment generation policy is not its fundamental concern by doing nothing to reactivate the economy resulting in the highest level of unemployment with more than 14 million unemployed and 27 million underused workers ever recorded in the history of Brazil, its economic policy is harmful to national interests by contributing to the denationalization of the Brazilian economy and the deindustrialization of the country, its environmental policy is responsible for the growth of fires and deforestation in the Amazon Legal and for disobedience to the Paris Agreement to combat global climate change, its science and technology policy promoted the destruction of the National Science, Technology and Innovation System (SNCTI) built over the last 60 years, its education and culture policy is characterized by a holy war ultra-conservative neo-fascist character against progressive and democratic ideals, its policy of social rights is characterized by disregarding the fundamental rights provided for in the 1988 Constitution, not consider support for the unemployed and the poor population and demonstrating its detachment from democracy and lack of respect as it addresses broad social sectors and its disastrous public health policy that has failed to combat the spread of the new Coronavirus by rendering the Ministry of Health inoperative, in addition to sabotaging all the measures put in place by governors and mayors to combat the spread of the virus.
Faced with the prospect of being defeated in the next presidential elections, Jair Bolsonaro seeks to remain in power, seeking to demoralize the country’s electoral system, which he has accused of rigging elections since 2014, as he did on 7/18 by doing a lecture to dozens of guest ambassadors striving to demoralize the elections in Brazil. The day after President Jair Bolsonaro repeated lies about confidence in the Brazilian electoral system in a meeting with ambassadors, three associations of Federal Police employees issued a joint note on 07/19 expressing confidence in electronic voting machines stating that no evidence of fraud in the electoral system. The document is signed by the National Association of Federal Police Delegates (ADPF), the National Association of Federal Criminal Experts (APCF) and the National Federation of Federal Police Delegates (Fenadepol). As his victory in the presidential elections is unlikely, Bolsonaro seeks to disrupt national life with an attack filled with repeated lies against the top of Brazil’s Judiciary. Itamaraty and the Armed Forces are demeaned in Bolsonaro’s endeavor with their coup connivance. Bolsonaro’s purpose is that the elections do not take place because, according to the polls, he knows that he will not renew his mandate and, if the elections take place, and his defeat happens, he will unleash a coup d’état under the false argument of that there was fraud in the elections to establish a far-right dictatorship in Brazil.
For the above, Bolsonaro needs to be defeated in the 2022 elections because the barbarism and dictatorship he defends are the greatest threats to the future of Brazil. In the 2022 elections, Brazil needs the union of the vast majority of the Brazilian people to make civilization and democracy overlap the intended barbarism and Bolsonaro dictatorship. Brazil needs to rescue the ideals of pursuit of human happiness, justice and social equality advocated by the Enlightenment during the Middle Ages in Europe. The confrontation between the defenders of civilization and democracy and the defenders of barbarism and the Bolsonaro dictatorship may result in the maintenance of representative democracy in Brazil with the victory of one of the democratic candidates (Lula, Ciro Gomes and Simone Tebet, among others) or its end with Bolsonaro’s victory in the presidential elections. In the same way that the Enlightenment was the political and ideological response to barbarism, the same should be considered in Brazil to unite, now, all citizens who defend democracy, political emancipation, freedom of thought and social justice, aiming to promote the improvement of the human condition in the country.
Everything indicates that Bolsonaro will not accept the result of the 2022 elections because, according to electoral polls, he will lose in the second round to all other candidates for the Presidency of the Republic, especially former President Lula, and that an eventual coup d’état would be being planned by him and which would have the support of certain sectors of the Armed Forces, military police, militia and segments of civil society. The coup d’état would be Bolsonaro’s attempt to establish a dictatorship under his command to impose his retrograde thinking on Brazilian society and, also, to avoid being taken to court bars to answer for the crimes he has been committing since he assumed the presidency of the Republic. The barbarism of the coup d’état could occur before or after the elections. Given this perspective, the forces defending civilization and democracy must prepare for this confrontation and not just to defeat Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 82, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and IPB – Polytechnic Institute of Bahia, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, 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).
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