Statement from Brazil Left Front in Ireland
The Brazilian people have voted in the first round to elect a new president. The far-right candiadte Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) got 46% of the votes, followed by Fernando Haddad (PT) – Lula and Dilma Rousseff’s successor- with 29%. Worth highlighting is the fact that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is incarcerated, has received 39 percent of the votes in the first polls.
In repudiation of the misogynist and authoritarian discourse of the leading candidate, the world got to know the #Elenao movement, organized by the Brazilian women, which brought together thousands of people last Saturday in various demonstrations all over Brazil and in many cities around the world.
Contrary to expectations, the extremist showed an increase in voting intentions after the protests, which reveals a confrontational attitude towards women by his electoral base. It is important to mention that the rejection of Bolsonaro among women exceeds 50%.
These elections are marked by the polarization of society. In other words, by the radicalization of the class struggle. On one side there is the antipetismo ( anti PT and also anti left), historically fed by right wing media, which grown in a context of economic retrenchment and brought us to this political crisis. On the other side, the result of it, the Brazilian version of fascism personified in Jair Bolsonaro.
As we have been saying, PT government is far from being properly leftist, but inside the elitist structure of Brazilian society it brought many positive changes to miserable and poor people’s lives. Many of them are now able to afford living abroad as is the case here in Ireland.
We already know that hate speech increased in Brazil during the presidential campaign. Facebook removed 2.5 million of this kind of publications only in the first half of the year. 81% of the victims of derogatory attacks on social networks were black women. Minorities, social movements, NGO’s and the left have been systematically attacked. Also, thanks to Bolsonaro being a supporter of gun legalization, in just one month Taurus, Brazilian arms manufacturer, increased its shares by 140%.
No matter who will be elected as a president, the instability will remain and it will be a challenge to revoke the anti- worker reforms introduced after the coup – such as those on the labour legislation and a constitutional amendment project (PEC 241) that freezes the public expenditure for 20 years.
The big challenge though will be to strengthen the social movements to collectively pressure the government for real changes. The secondary students in São Paulo, the Homeless Workers Movement ( MTST) and many groups of Women, LGBTI, Indigenous and Black people around the country have being showing that we know how to organize ourselves. It won’t finish with the elections.
What the world is watching today is not only a national issue, and the economists and speculators know it pretty well. So we call for international solidarity to fight neo colonial economic politics, also known as liberalism, for more than human rights, for people’s power.
The streets are ours and so is the politics. Just keep to the left.
