Center is not destiny – Opinion

Civil society has risen to loudly and clearly declare that a democratic regime, won at the cost of much suffering, is non-negotiable and that its defense is above political and ideological differences that can divide citizens. Understandably, President Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian delusions may haunt him through sleepless nights and stimulate the imagination of the libertic fanatics who still support him, but it doesn’t go beyond that. Undermining the constitutional order that the President of the Republic has dreamed of in order to sustain himself over time will require a certain strength – material and political – and a spectrum of support that Bolsonaro certainly does not and will not have.

This was evident from the mass commitment of the population to Letter to Brazilians and Braziliansa civic manifesto organized by the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo in defense of the rule of law democratic state and electoral justice.

BUT Map idealized in Largo de São Francisco, has the historical merit of uniting the various representative strata of society – capital and labor – around a staunch defense of democracy and periodic elections. But Bolsonaro’s attacks on the e-voting system and the holding of the next election itself are only the most pressing problems facing Brazilian democracy.

Once the next elections are held and their results are approved by the Electoral Court and recognized by all decent people in the country, as happened without incident in recent decades, the way the country is run will need to be redesigned. If the current model, in which government guarantors weaken the executive power and control the budget without any transparency and respect for voters and taxpayers, is maintained, then one cannot speak of democratic strength, even if the elections are the cleanest and the fair of history.

How a budget is made and executed is at the heart of democracy as it concerns diligence with public money and debate about the purpose of these scarce resources. When the budget is dominated by a handful of parties and leaders who take it upon themselves to choose how and where public money is spent without being accountable to citizens, one cannot speak of democracy.

Thus, the struggle for democracy is also fighting to ensure that the allocation of billions of reais from public resources is subject to national interests, and not to the limitations of Centrão. To defend democracy in a presidential country is to save the authority of the future President of the Republic from being the great inductor of the national agenda. This was lost due to the moral and political weakness of the incumbent. Among the many evils he has caused, Bolsonaro has reduced Brazilian democracy to a humiliating level, and there is no indication that if re-elected, he will be able to do otherwise. Thus, his reappointment will doom Brazilian democracy to a long winter.

However, there are many who believe that whoever takes over as president from 2023 will remain as it is. Perhaps out of apathy, it is assumed that Brazil is doomed to live under the yoke of this predatory device. Nothing further from the truth.

It is entirely possible that relations between the President and Congress will be minimally Republican. Contrary to appearances, the pernicious association of Bolsonaro and Centrão, and before him the criminal consortium between PT and monthly workers, are not the only ways to run the country. History shows that the formation of government coalitions does not necessarily involve corruption or the transfer of power to parliamentarians lacking public spirit. We are talking about the division of power, which is absolutely normal in a democracy. The anomaly, which has come to a paroxysm in the present government, lies in the false purpose which enlivens the exercise of all this power. And this is what needs to be changed. United by such a common cause, society is able to give Brazil the fate it wants.