Sat Mar 16, 2024
March 16, 2024

Olympics 2016: inequality and violence

Out with Temer, Rousseff, Aécio, Bolsonaro, Dornelles, Paes! Out with them all!

The 2016 Rio Olympics are in course since August 5, amid increasing political and economic crisis in the country. The social calamity reaching the state of Rio de Janeiro, and also the country, is due to years of PT, PMDB or PSDB ruling for the bankers, multinationals, contractors and corrupt politicians.

By PSTU – Rio de Janeiro.

 

Today the state of Rio de Janeiro has the largest contingent out of more than 12 million unemployed in Brazil; the cost of living has skyrocketed; public services have been broken up; and corruption is widespread. In this context the workers, women, the poor and black youth, and LGBTs are the most hit, victims of unemployment, wage squeeze, violence and discrimination.

Unrelated to this, governments and national and international companies use the Olympic mega event to make high profits and do not skimp attacks on workers and the poor people with refinements of exploitation, violence and discrimination. The 2016 Olympics are not clean, they are games of inequality and violence.

For the rich billions, for the workers hunger, poverty and repression

The “Olympic legacy” will be very costly for the workers and the people. According to the Olympic Public Authority (APO), the 2016 Olympics budget increased by US$ 130 million reaching US$ 13 billion. Thus, greatly increasing Rio’s debt which, according to the Economic Affairs Committee of the Senate (CAE), is the most indebted municipality in the country.

The state of Rio de Janeiro is experiencing a real calamity with Pezão/Dornelles government, which had no qualms spending around US$ 6 billion in the construction of Metro Line 4, well above the initial budget of US$ 3 billion informed by the State Department of Transportation. While the civil servants, retirees, pensioners and outsourced employees received the opposed treatment: installment payment or nonpayment of wages on the grounds of the state economic crisis.

Most of the investments in works of mobility and stadiums were funded by the public budget. Moreover, with the tax exemption approved by the government, enterprises, service providers and broadcasters allowed to transmit the events get high profits. This represented a huge tax breaks.

According to the Court of Rio de Janeiro state (TCE-RJ), the billionaire tax exemptions granted by the state government in the last six years would be sufficient to guarantee five years of the public services payroll and of retired public servants’ pension. The TCE-RJ report revealed that between 2008 and 2013 the state government failed to raise about US$ 43 billion, mostly VAT.

The public resources spent in the Olympics could pay the public employees’ salaries, fund the public health and education in RJ or reduce unemployment. According to the IBGE, the number of unemployed in Rio de Janeiro is around 700,000 people, currently the highest unemployment rate in the country.

But these issues are not priorities for these governments that pay for overpriced works of dubious quality, to favor large national and international contractors while the people suffers from unemployment and poverty.

Athens, Greece, which hosted the 2004 Olympic Games is an example of legacy of mega-events. After more than a decade, the Greek stadiums are completely abandoned in the midst of a country in crisis.

Mega-events install exception regimes, discrimination and racism

The mega-events like the Olympics plunder the public budget. The Marauder operation of the Federal Police established that Delta’s income from public funds was nearly US$ 3,5 billion – 96% of all company revenues – between 2007 and 2012. Delta was the contractor responsible for the Maracanã stadium revamp for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. According to the report, Delta is part of a criminal organization, which diverted US$ 120 million out of its income to pay bribes, being notorious the close links the owner the contractor, Fernando Cavendish, had with the former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral.

To secure these profitable businesses, governments evicted whole communities, surrounded slums with walls, under the pretext of environment protection and, above all, sieged them with the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs), that have been responsible for a real slaughter of the poor and black people.

The major events create a state of exception with laws and decrees created especially for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games (the Olympic Act No. 12,035/2009) both sanctioned by the now impeached president Dilma Roussseff (PT – Workers’ Party). Such measures represent an affront to Brazil’s national sovereignty. The Act restricts many rights, such as freedom of speech and expression in official spaces of the games. It is an offense to the constitutional right to freedom of expression that must be guaranteed in any situation. International entities shouldn’t be allowed to be above the law or the public space be forbidden for demonstrations of any kind.

In addition, Rousseff, at the behest of imperialism also attacks democracy by sanctioning the anti-terrorism Act, a huge attack on democratic rights.

As if all this were not enough, in a further demonstration of discrimination and racism, the religions of African origin, very popular in Brazil, can’t be represented in the Ecumenical Centre at the Olympics city, designed to allow that athletes from any religion express their faith during the games.

That’s why, according to a survey by Datafolha [research institute of the Folha press group, one of the main ones in Brazil], 63% of Brazilians think that the Rio Olympics bring more harm than good. Also, the discontent with Temer government (Dilma Rousseff’s vice-president) grows everywhere, the same that happened with Dilma. No wonder that, according to the same survey institute, most Brazilians (62%) support the call for anticipated presidential elections.

 

No to Bill 257 and to Social Security and Labor reforms! Unite the struggles towards a General Strike!

The workers and youth do not accept paying for the crisis. The popular discontent is huge. Since June 2013, struggles, strikes and occupations grow across the country. It is known that you can’t have illusions in the National Congress, which has turned into a business desk for the rich, or in the state Legislative Assemblies, City Halls and corrupt politicians in general. Only the organization and mobilization of workers, civil servants and youth can guarantee their rights. The heroic strike of Rio education staff and the students high school occupations show that they don’t accept any rights cut and that the attempts to social movements’ criminalization don’t scare them.

The Temer government (PMDB) and the bosses want to continue the fiscal austerity initiated by Dilma (PT) to pay the public debt to national and international bankers, which consumes about 45% of the Federal Budget. To do so, it prepares a series of attacks on workers’ rights, such as the pension reform, which increases the retirement age, and Bill 257 that privatizes public services and extinguishes the job stability for public servants. For this, they have the support of this corrupt Congress, the State Government, the City Hall, parties and politicians involved in corruption scandals plaguing the country.

To stop these attacks and defeat austerity and all threats to our rights it’s necessary to go beyond, it is essential to follow the French workers’ example who are on the warpath against Hollande’s labor reform. It is necessary to unify the struggles and build a big general strike to put out Temer, Rousseff, Renan, Aécio, Bolsonaro … Out with all of them, stop their austerity plans, call general elections under new rules! Enough with this corrupt and unequal capitalist system that produces misery and oppression for the majority, we need to change this to guarantee jobs, living wages, health, education, transport and housing for all.

On August 16, a National Day of Demonstrations has been convened by the CSP-Conlutas, CUT, Força Sindical and other trade unions centrals in defense of jobs and against the removal of rights. It points to the realization of a strong day of struggle that can be an important step forward for the construction of the general strike necessary to end the attacks on workers’ rights.

Out with Temer, Rousseff, Aécio, Bolsonaro, Dornelles, Paes! Out with all of them! For a Socialist Workers Government supported by People Councils!

The changes needed by the people won’t come through elections or reforming this corrupt and rotten system, which only produces misery, unemployment and social inequalities, but through the organization and mobilization of workers and the youth and a workers’ government without capitalists and corrupt.

The workers who produce the wealth of the country can and should rule based on a working class and socialist program to resolve the serious crisis that hits Rio de Janeiro and the country. But for this you need to draw lessons from PT’s degeneration, which allied with the bankers and contractors.

Only a socialist workers’ government independent from bosses and corrupt can reverse the priorities in favor of workers and the poor and be at the service of their interests. It’s necessary to break with the bankers; suspend the public debt payment; require an audit of the public debt; say no to the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which limits social spending; end the privatization and outsourcing of public services; nationalize the public transport under workers’ control; reduce transport fares towards their annulment, raise the budget for public health and education; nationalization without compensation of companies that lay off workers; reduction of working hours without reducing wages; plan of public works to combat unemployment; stop the privatization of the pre-salt giant oil fields, for a 100% state owned and workers’ controlled Petrobras; down with racism, sexism and LGBT-phobia, no to all forms of discrimination and oppression, equal pay for equal work; right to abortion; the end of the UPP, police demilitarization and drugs legalization, among other measures.

But, it’s not enough, as left sectors advocate, to join activists in a campaign just for ousting Temer. We need to go further, we need to defend the “Out with all of them”, to break with the bankers, contractors and large companies and present a workers’ and socialist program. And we can’t campaign for Dilma’s return to the presidency. She also ruled for bankers and corrupt. Dilma Rousseff was responsible for the austerity measures Bill that Temer now wants to implement. In Rio city, the PT allied with the PMDB to elect the mayor Eduardo Paes. That is, instead of choosing the workers’ side, the PT held hands to businessmen and corrupt.

The left can’t base their actions on obtaining the highest number of votes in elections as did the PT. The left must guide their actions by the unification of the struggles and presenting a fighting way out of the crisis experienced by the country. The PSOL (a left reformist party) defends a program that does not break with the bankers, contractors and large companies and that advocates small reforms in the system, what they call the radicalization of democracy, this democracy of the rich, moving in the same direction and repeating the same mistakes of the PT.

There’s no use to present such a tolerable program and repeat the tragedy of PT governments. Without facing the big business, the contractors and the mafia of public transport nothing will be changed. The PSOL goes the opposite way, opening the party to alliances with bourgeois parties, as the PDT, PV, Rede and others for the next local elections, as approved by its National Executive. Its decision to stand as the “unifying party of the progressive electors” leads to new class collaboration governments as happened in PT governments.

The struggles taking place in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil and around the world tend to deepen and require the resumption of the horizon of the socialist revolution. No more exploitation and oppression. We call all fighters who are in the strikes and occupations to take to streets the fight for “Out with Temer, out with all of them and build the General Strike” together with wielding the banner of the socialist revolution and fighting for a socialist workers’ government supported by People Councils.

***

Translation: Marcos Margarido.

Check out our other content

Check out other tags:

Most Popular Articles