Hundreds of 1000’s of persons took to the streets of Brazil previous Saturday in a new spherical of protests versus fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s murderous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The protests took spot in hundreds of cities in all 26 Brazilian states and also overseas. In the major of the demonstrations, 70,000 men and women collected on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, according to organizers.
It was the fourth working day of mass demonstrations in opposition to Bolsonaro due to the fact May perhaps 29, when avenue protests started to just take area just after a deadly 2nd wave of the pandemic in March and April, and amid the Senate Parliamentary Fee of Inquiry (PCI) investigation of the federal government’s conduct in combating the pandemic. The PCI has currently uncovered evidence of each a deliberate plan of herd immunity, i.e., permitting the virus unfold and infect the largest range of men and women, and of corruption in the government’s invest in of vaccines.
The demonstrations have been named by the so-called “Bolsonaro Out Nationwide Marketing campaign,” consisting of the Personnel Social gathering (PT) and other bourgeois functions such as the Socialist Celebration (PSB) and the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), along with the PT’s pseudo-still left satellites, this sort of as the Socialism and Flexibility Party (PSOL) and all the Brazilian union federations—including the PT-managed Minimize, the Morenoite Conlutas, joined to the pseudo-still left Unified Socialist Staff Occasion (PSTU), and Força Sindical, whose origins day back to the Brazilian military services dictatorship.
In a statement released on June 21, the Brazilian union federations affirmed that the demonstrations are supposed to “pressure the president of the Reduced Property, Arthur Lira,” who is responsible for deciding whether or not to open impeachment proceedings, “to put on the agenda one particular of the additional than one hundred impeachment requests.”
This demand from customers reveals significantly of the character of these organizations and wherever they are in search of to immediate the opposition in opposition to Bolsonaro. In 2019, the 1st calendar year of the Bolsonaro govt, Brazil saw the most significant demonstrations in several years in opposition to the federal government’s cuts on education and learning. Due to the fact then, the PT, the pseudo-remaining and the unions have all worked to divert this tremendous well known dissatisfaction at the rear of the capitalist condition, from the presidential elections to empty appeals to Congress and the Supreme Court docket against Bolsonaro. And they have used the demonstrations to decrease the massive social pressure from down below and to get this perhaps explosive motion less than handle.
Due to the fact 2019, the union federations have also started to hold joint May Day rallies, in which they have introduced the most suitable-wing figures in Brazilian politics onto their platforms. These are politicians responsible for carrying out broad attacks against the Brazilian doing the job course more than the a long time and who supported Bolsonaro’s election, even as they would afterwards try out to distance them selves from him. This predominantly features officers of the Brazilian Social Democracy Celebration (PSDB), who joined the last two May Day rallies that showcased the hated former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This calendar year, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, was also anticipated to show up at it, but the Reduce, in watch of the extensive unfavorable repercussions, finished up blocking his participation.
This rotten political alliance culminated in the launching of a “super-request” for Bolsonaro’s impeachment by the PT, the PSOL and the unions together with considerably-suitable parties and figures. Amid Bolsonaro’s former supporters who signed the impeachment request sent on June 30 have been the reactionary federal deputies Alexandre Frota (PSDB) and Kim Kataguiri, of the liberal No cost Brazil Movement (MBL), a person of the leaders of the demonstrations for the impeachment of former PT president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 on trumped-up prices.
In the future spherical of mass demonstrations, which took area just a 7 days following, on July 3, the presidents of the PT and PSOL, Gleisi Hoffmann and Juliano Medeiros, as perfectly as the PSOL’s Morenoite factions Resistência and Socialist Remaining Motion (MES), overtly advocated the participation of appropriate-wing get-togethers, in buy to develop a “mass” struggle versus Bolsonaro, according to them.
A new reactionary political alliance was shaped for last Saturday’s demonstrations, dubbed the “Democratic Bloc.” It involves the Maoist Communist Get together of Brazil (PCdoB), overtly right-wing functions like PSDB and Cidadania, and the “political renewal” actions Renova and Acredito, funded by big organization and whose users in Congress supported Bolsonaro’s 2019 pension reform. The rotten and professional-company union federations, which include Força Sindical, are also element of this bloc, as are scholar organizations linked to the PCdoB, this sort of as the Nationwide Union of Students (UNE). The PCdoB is the most important advocate for the protests to consider on a nationalist “green and yellow” (the colors of the Brazilian flag) character, banning “red,” discovered with the remaining, in get to form a “broad front” versus Bolsonaro.
This full course of action is happening as the pandemic proceeds to rage in Brazil. The desire for managing the spread of the virus by closing educational institutions and businesses has been completely excluded by the political get-togethers and the unions primary the demonstrations. These political forces are performing to give a legal deal with for the continuation of the ruling class’ herd immunity coverage.
In São Paulo, this has been going on by means of typical conferences among the union federations, including the Reduce, and Governor Doria. These conferences serve the sole intent of providing the millionaire governor a “social façade”—by selling meager guidelines these types of as a subsidy for the obtain of cooking fuel, at the request of the unions—while he pushes for a comprehensive reopening of all financial pursuits and colleges.
Although the figures of COVID-19 infections and fatalities have lowered over the previous thirty day period as vaccinations have amplified, as of Saturday Brazil nevertheless had an typical of 1,168 day by day fatalities and 37,885 infections. Brazil has now recorded 549,500 COVID-19 fatalities, trailing only the US. São Paulo condition alone recorded 418 fatalities and 12,086 new situations last Friday.
With group transmission of the Delta variant confirmed in seven states and with out the implementation of lockdown steps, gurus warn that Brazil could see a new increase in the coming weeks, as in the US and Europe.
In the encounter of mass protests, the uncontrolled pandemic and revelations emerging from the COVID PCI, Bolsonaro and his allies have elevated their threats of an electoral coup, adopting the very same strategies employed by Donald Trump in the very last US presidential elections. Bolsonaro continues to progress his phony claim that Brazil’s electronic voting method can and will be rigged to favor the election of previous PT president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
A July 22 report by the every day Estado de S. Paulo discovered that these coup threats have been backed by Bolsonaro’s defense minister, Gen. Walter Braga Netto. He was appointed to this posture as aspect of Bolsonaro’s unprecedented sacking of the full military services command with the open intent of aligning the armed forces behind his reactionary agenda. The Estado noted that, in early July, Braga Netto, accompanied by the armed forces commanders, questioned an interlocutor to alert Household Speaker Arthur Lira that there would be no elections future calendar year if there had been no “printed and auditable ballots.”
A bill mandating printed ballots is also scheduled for a vote in August by a congressional distinctive fee. The creator of this monthly bill is the ideal-wing federal deputy Bia Kicis, one of Bolsonaro’s most faithful allies. She achieved final Friday with Beatrix Von Storch, a leader of the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), accompanied by the president’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who was in Washington on January 6, using lessons from the coup attempt.
The response of the PT, and Lula in unique, to this progress was a person of full complacency and political opportunism. Globo’s columnist wrote very last week that “the former president was silent on the Estado report that unveiled … the [Braga Netto] threat … so as not to put himself at odds with the army.” She more said that “Lula has not spared attempts to get nearer to the navy.”
Both of those the PT’s record and the extra latest moves by the occasion and Lula expose the fraudulence of their intended opposition to Bolsonaro, as well as to everything the fascistic president stands for, together with the danger of dictatorship. This also applies to the pseudo-remaining companies and the unions, whose reactionary claim that bringing the ideal wing to the protests would make them a lot more large was speedily uncovered. In São Paulo, the so-known as “Democratic Bloc” managed to obtain only a few dozen union and bash bureaucrats with Brazilian flags in front of their sound truck on Paulista Avenue.
As in earlier protests, the doing the job class was fully absent as an organized social drive. This contrasts with the powerful opposition that has developed in the Brazilian working class through the pandemic, with protests and strikes by teachers as effectively as industrial, app delivery, overall health treatment, oil and transportation workers in protection of their dwelling conditions and their possess lives versus the uncontrolled distribute of COVID-19. This movement has been intentionally isolated and sabotaged by the unions.
It is to this producing motion that the protesting youth and workers must flip, and not to the dead conclude of bourgeois politics represented by the PT and its satellites in the pseudo-left and the unions. For this purpose, a mindful and complete break with these organizations is essential. It is important to assemble a new groundbreaking management, the Socialist Equality Team, which is preventing to create a Brazilian segment of the Intercontinental Committee of the Fourth International.