Brazil: What Is at Stake in the Second Round
Nobody Can Be Neutral, Nobody Can Be in the Middle, Nobody Can Be Indifferent
Nobody Can Be Neutral, Nobody Can Be in the Middle, Nobody Can Be Indifferent
By Emir Sader
Monthly Review
June 6, 2006
[Editor's Note - Although I'm not religious, I think I prefer Dante's addage: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."]
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether Petrobras will be privatized -- as Alckmin's advisor, Mendonça de Barros confirmed to the Exame magazine -- and whether, with it, the Bank of Brazil, the Caixa Econômica Federal [a bank administered by the Finance Ministry], and Eletrobrás also will be.
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether social movements will be criminalized and repressed by the federal government again.
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether Brazil will continue privileging its foreign policy based on alliances with Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Cuba, as well as other countries of the south in the world, instead of a policy of subordination to the United States.
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether Brazil will return to the policy of privatization of education.
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether Brazil's cultural policy will center on private financing.
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether we will have more or fewer precarious jobs, or more or fewer jobs in the "white market."
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether there will be more or less public investment in areas like energy, communications, roads, basic sanitation, education, health, and culture.
What is at stake in the second round is not only whether we will continue diminishing inequalities in Brazil by means of redistributive social policies -- micro-credit, higher real purchasing power of the minimum wage, lower prices of goods in the basic basket, the Family Allowance [Bolsa Familia], and rural electrification, among others. Or whether we will return to the PSDB-PFL policies of the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
What is at stake in the second round is all of the above, which, by themselves, are very important and show a great difference between the two candidates. What is at stake in the second round is, above all, the international insertion of Brazil, which will have direct consequences on the destiny of the country.
With Lula, the policy will continue to promote regional integration and south-south alliances, against the FTAA in favor of Mercosur. With Alckmin, the policies of free trade will be promoted: the FTAA, the signing of a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, the isolation of the ALBA [Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas, Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas], and the weakening of Mercosur, the South American Community, and the alliances with South Africa, India, and the Group of 20.
What is at stake in the second round is the resolution of whether Brazil is going to subordinate its future to policies of free trade or bet on processes of regional integration. This makes a fundamental difference for the future of Brazil and Latin America. Adopt free trade, open the country's economy definitively to great international monopolies -- American, in particular -- and renounce any form of internal regulation of the environment, currency, policies of quotas, etc., and we'll condemn Brazil to the predominance of market policies for ever, which would mean perpetuating the inequalities that make our country the most unjust place in the world.
What is at stake in the second round, then, is whether we will have an unjust or more unjust country, whether we will have a more sovereign or more subordinated country, whether we will have a more democratic or less democratic country, whether we will have a country or, once and for all, convert ourselves into a speculative market and consolidate ourselves as a conservative country directed by oligarchic elites (like a mixture of Daslu and Opus Dei). Whether we will be a country, a society, a nation -- democratic and sovereign -- or will be reduced to a stock market, to a shopping mall surrounded by misery on all sides.
All this is at stake in the second round. In this situation, nobody can be neutral, nobody can be in the middle, nobody can be indifferent.
Emir Sader was born in São Paulo in 1943, to a family of Lebanese descent. He directs the Laboratory of Public Policies (LPP) at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, where he is a professor of sociology. He is the author of A Vingança da História [The Revenge of History] (Boitempo Editorial, 2003), among others books. Read his blog at Carta Maior. "Brasil: Lo que está en juego en la segunda vuelta" first appeared in Página/12 and Visiones Alternativas on 4 October 2006. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.
