By: Vinícius Zaparoli, from São Paulo, SP
Translator: Artur Valente
Reviewer: Wilma Olmo Correa
On August 26, next Saturday, it is going to start the national debate cycle led by the Vamos! (COME ON) Platform. The cycle’s launching will take place in São Paulo, at 4pm. The debate will be guided by Guilherme Boulos, public figure of MTST; Marcelo Freixo e Luiza Erundina, both politicians of PSOL; Vagner Freitas, CUT’s president; in addition the intellectuals Leonardo Sakamoto, Sônia Guajajara and Dríade Aguiar will attend the launching.
The Vamos! Platform is an extremely important movement built by the Frente Povo Sem Medo (Fearless People Front). During the next months, the Platform will bring workers from all over the country, besides students, feminist activists, activists of the black and LGBT movements, popular and union movements will be there in order to analyze and propose policies that can be effective to change Brazil.
In the last couple of years, the Frente Povo Sem Medo (Fearless People Front) has played a role in the working class resistance against the austerity reforms and in the struggle to put an end in Temer’s presidential mandate. Now, the Vamos! Platform has taken the role to stimulate a real debate about what the best program is in order to change the country radically.
In our opinion, this cycle of debates we are helping to build can also play other role: which is one that introduces a new political alternative for the country, fighting on the streets against the rightist parties and attacking the national and the imperialist interests fearlessly.
In order to achieve our goals, we have to go beyond the PT’s government experience that, even though it improved the poor people’s life in some ways, along the economical growing period, it did not make any structural reforms in Brazil.
Unfortunately, PT has chosen to not break up with the elite and its old right wing parties. Consequently, in more than 13 years in the presidency, the party did not establish a proper and fair taxation for rich people and it also did not propose any urban or land reforms. Moreover PT did not end the media’s monopoly, did not demilitarize the law enforcement, did not criminalized the LGBTophobia and did not legalize the abortion.
Even worse, when the economic crises finally came to Brazil, the PT’s government started to impose the first austerity measures targeting mostly the unemployment insurance. It was a real “electoral larceny” that had a huge impact in Dilma’s popularity.
The agreements made by PT with PMDB and other conservative parties claiming for governability and their participation in some corruption schemes put the party in a position of becoming a hostage of the right wing parties. These policies empowered the right wing sector in the National Congress and also on the streets, giving them an open window to start the parliamentary coup that brought Dilma’s mandate down.
Therefore, looking at all these imposed backlashes to social rights, the challenge accepted by the Vamos! Platform is to build a new road that breaks up with all the members of the racist elite in Brazil. The Lula’s candidacy for the presidential elections in 2018 is not a road which could allow reaching this objective. As a matter of fact, it would only serve as a repetition of the mistakes made by him and Dilma during their mandates.
We believe that the new Platform can build a new political left wing alternative to change Brazil if it brings together the left wing socialist parties such as PCB, PSOL and PSTU and the social movements such as MTST and others to propose policies that go against the enrichment of the wealthy, focusing on guaranteeing all the basic and necessary structure, such as housing for the poor people, high quality public healthcare, high quality public education and employment for the majority of the people.
This road starts to be built with the current cycle of debates and it needs, equally, an independent and anticapitalistic candidacy for the next presidential elections. The socialist left wing sector must contribute with all its forces in order to ensure that this project will be victorious. Let’s change Brazil without fear!
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