In 2006, a decision was made to ban many symbols of our democracy who are still in their teens from participating in elections. Shows were banned, as well as key chains, caps, pens, gifts in general. Even the adviser’s shirt, known as a contraceptive, did not escape the wave of bans.
There was no shortage of experienced people to warn that the rule would be harmless enough to moralize campaign finance in the face of the Mensalao scandal.
There were several punning voices saying that the election would turn from a pro-democracy party into a pro-democracy commemoration, given the required dose of seriousness.
Law no. 11300/2006 states that “during an election campaign, it is prohibited to produce, use, distribute by a committee, a candidate or with their permission T-shirts, key chains, caps, pens, gifts, basic baskets or any other goods or materials that may provide an advantage to the voter.“(emphasis mine)
It’s a simplistic premise, with little to do with reality, to assume that all the freebies and even the demo mice brought votes to the candidate who provided them. People are more complex.
We have a plague of vote buying, so the basic food basket is in law, reminding us that there are those who take advantage of human misfortune. However, this does not mean that the T-shirt or the show wins votes.
The pre-election time tradition was to go to all the performances and, if necessary, put on all the shirts and raise all the flags to see the performers.
After that, our moms decided which T-shirts would become pajamas and which ones would go straight to the floor, depending on political preferences or the availability of sleepwear in the family.
The thing is, no one took these things very seriously. Political symbols can have an affective meaning depending on who gave them to you and under what circumstances. They were a symbol of that action, not something limited in the object itself, which would have been commonplace.
The man wore a Diretas Já shirt, remembering an important personal memory, a PT star given by someone significant, a symbol that everyone used during the march when friends were united and believed in a better future.
We have gone from the moment when the priority was people and the dream of the future of the country, to the moment when the symbol of consumption is an end in itself.
It was the union of high technology and informality at work with populism that brought us the towels of political idols. In the last elections, Jair Bolsonaro’s T-shirts were the fever.
Now they have started making towels, a technological advancement in cloth printing. Lula had her national debut on Lolapalooza as Pablo Vittar. The Lulismo symbol was created there, which sellers are also trying to offer to Bolsonarists and even cirists, but with much less hype and success.
Lying on the imprint of the face of your favorite politician is something very far from the concept of democracy. Wipe yourself on it, I think, even more so.
This past weekend, Mac Naninha extrapolated the creativity of using a towel by singing “Dou prá Velho” while swaying on stage while two assistants picked up Lula’s towel right behind her.
Party or candidate symbols are no longer just a sign of an important moment or a people’s dream. They have become a form of expression and identity.
This suggests that these candidates, in the opinion of those who use the symbols, are able to fulfill their dreams and aspirations by representing the image that these people want to convey.
But don’t these people have the right to want it and do it? Of course yes. They also enjoy the right to move further and further away from the concept of liberal democracy.
These are symbols that perpetuate in the popular imagination the notion that the human figure represents the will of the people. It is known in democracies that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There will be no towel to clean up the mess we make.
