HOW TO BUILD SOCIAL PEACE IN BRAZIL FOR THE LULA GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE ITS GOVERNABILITY  

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to present how to build social peace in Brazil for the Lula government to ensure its governability in order to promote the country’s economic and social progress. One fact is indisputable: Brazil is a politically divided country. On the one hand, there are those who supported Lula and, on the other, those who supported Bolsonaro in the last presidential elections. The events of January 8 in Brasilia show that Brazil is in conflict with the radical Bolsonarists who attacked the Democratic State of Law with the purpose of implanting a dictatorship in the country. A DataFolha survey shows that 93% of the Brazilian population protested against the acts perpetrated by radical Bolsonarists, which demonstrates that they are an angry minority in the country. All Bolsonaristas radical enemies of democracy who organized and participated in this insurrection need to be exemplarily punished because they violated the laws of the Republic and vandalized the headquarters of the powers of the Republic. In spite of this, it is necessary to build social peace in Brazil through the winner of the presidential elections, President Lula, who will not acquire the conditions of governance in a troubled country. Social peace is the condition without which President Lula will be able to govern Brazil and promote its economic and social progress.

President Lula should direct the gesture of social peace towards sectors of the population committed to the democratic process in Brazil, even with the participation of those who supported Bolsonaro’s reelection but who oppose radical Bolsonarism. It is necessary for President Lula to take advantage of the opportunity he had when holding a recent meeting with the presidents of the other powers of the Republic and the state governors after the insurrection in Brasilia on January 8, to initiate a national concertation in defense of democracy , social peace and the economic and social progress of Brazil. This initiative would make it possible to politically isolate Bolsonaristas who are enemies of democracy, transforming them into pariahs in the political universe of Brazil. The national concertation should be inaugurated based on a pact to be celebrated between the powers of the Republic, the state governors and representative sectors of civil society around a common program of national salvation that should be carried forward by the government of President Lula. The common national salvation program should have as its objective the defense of the democratic conquests based on the 1988 Constitution and the overcoming of Brazil’s gigantic economic, social and environmental problems.

The pact for national salvation is the “sine-qua-non” condition for the maintenance of democracy in Brazil and the achievement of governability by President Lula. It is opportune to observe that there will only be governability if the Lula government can implement public policies with the support of Parliament, the productive sectors and the vast majority of the Brazilian population. Economic and social progress will only be achieved in Brazil as long as there is also effective governance, which is related to the financial and administrative capacity of the Lula government and the competence of its managers to practice public policies. To be successful, the Lula government will have to resolve the existing federal government’s fiscal crisis to exercise governance and solve Brazil’s economic and social problems. Governance is the competence of Brazilian government managers to implement the decisions taken or, in other words, the capacity of the Brazilian State to exercise its government. Governance is transforming government action into public action, articulating government actions at all levels and with civil society. Without conditions of Governability, adequate Governance is impossible.

Economic and social progress will only be achieved in Brazil by the Lula government as long as there is effective Governability and Governance, which will only exist when there is the most constructive relationship possible between the constituted powers of the Republic (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) among themselves in the decision-making process, the most constructive relationship possible between the constituted powers of the Republic and the governments of the component states of the Brazilian federation and municipal governments in the decision-making process, and the most constructive relationship possible between the constituted powers of the Republic and Civil Society in the decision-making process. President Lula’s gesture of social peace would undoubtedly create the conditions for the existence of governability and governance conditions in Brazil. This is the condition for social peace in Brazil and for the Lula government to promote economic and social progress in the country, overcoming the 7 problems described below:

1. The need to overcome the scorched earth situation in which the Bolsonaro government transformed Brazil in the economic sphere with the bankruptcy of the Brazilian economy, in the social sphere with the horror of unprecedented mass unemployment in the history of Brazil with around 28 million of unemployed and discouraged Brazilians and hunger and misery reaching around 32 million people and in the environmental sphere by contributing to the growth of fires and deforestation in the Legal Amazon.

2. The need to reindustrialize Brazil in order to reverse the deindustrialization process that has taken place in the country since the 1980s of the 20th century, to the point where the participation of industry in the formation of GDP fell from 27.3% in 1987 to 11% in 2019 unlike what happened in the period 1947/1987, in which industry’s participation in the formation of Brazil’s GDP evolved from 16.5% in 1947 to 27.3% in 1987. Reindustrializing Brazil means abandoning the neoliberal economic model and replacing it with the national developmental policy with the Brazilian State acting in the planning of the national economy, as an inducer of the economic and social development process, in encouraging the implementation of import-substituting industries for inputs and products and in financing and granting tax incentives to ensure national self-sufficiency.

3. The need to abandon the neoliberal policy of the existing public spending ceiling in Brazil, which freezes the federal government budget for 20 years, compromising its action in carrying out public investments necessary for the resumption of national development.

4. The need to carry out a tax reform that is fair for people, for businesses and for Brazil, with the objectives of simplifying, facilitating and improving the Brazilian tax system, generating positive impacts on productivity and economic growth in the country, taxing super-rich and contribute to the reduction of social and regional inequalities.

5. The need to renegotiate with public debt creditors the extension of the term for payment of interest and amortization of the public debt so that the federal government has resources for investments necessary for the resumption of national development, given that more than 50% of the budget of the Union is currently destined to the payment of the public debt.

6. The need to abandon the neoliberal economic model that devastated the Brazilian economy from 1990 to the present moment with its replacement by the developmentalist national economic model to promote economic growth and the reduction of unemployment in Brazil. The poor performance of the Brazilian economy, the sharp deindustrialization of the country, the fiscal crisis of the federal government, the disproportionate increase in the federal public debt, the generalized bankruptcy of companies and mass unemployment from 1990 to the present moment demonstrate the unfeasibility of the economic model neoliberal implanted in Brazil. The adoption of the developmentalist national economic model is justified because it was the model that provided the greatest economic and social development in Brazil in its history from 1930 to 1980.

7. The need to face the current world economic and financial crisis that tends to get worse with: i) the escalation of the global debt that corresponds to more than 3 times the world GDP and threatens to put the world capitalist system in check in the face of the possibility of explosion of the public debt bubble of the United States and China, which are the biggest debtors on the planet; ii) the drastic downturn of the economy of the United States, China and the European Union, which may enter into recession in 2023 due to the increase in energy prices resulting from the war between Russia and Ukraine; and, iii) the possibility of two giant global banks, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, failing because they are on the verge of collapse triggering a new global economic and financial crisis similar to the Great Recession of 2008 and the Depression of 1929. The economic crisis and the current global financial situation, which tends to get worse, no longer justifies Brazil’s insertion in neoliberal economic globalization in view of its vulnerability.

Overcoming these 7 problems by the Lula government could contribute to not only rebuilding the Brazilian economy, but above all to maintaining social peace in Brazil and neutralizing the threats against democracy represented by radical Bolsonarism.

* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and of 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 the 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), A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022)and a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, United States, 2022).