To stop the reforms, it is necessary to defeat Temer. This is the main task posed for workers. The government has nothing to rely on and the bourgeois democratic regime is being increasingly questioned by workers.By Júlio Anselmo and Israel Luz, Youth of PSTU – Brazil.
This situation opened a debate in society regarding Temer’s replacement. A great part of the bourgeoisie is in favor of electing a new president through Congress, differing only on the candidate. But in fact, there is a chance for Rodrigo Maia (DEM-RJ) to become acting president in the case of Temer’s fall.
We have to reject any attempt of election by this corrupt Congress and for Maia to take office when Temer falls, but we want to expose here our debate with the policy of part of the left, which is calling for Direct elections now and present our proposal of General Elections.
The CUT and the CTB – the PT and the PCdoB, claim to support Out with Temer, but in practice, this is not so. Just take a look at the “difficulty” to make the major Federations call an actual date for the new General Strike, and even more to make this a Day of active resistance by the working class. Pay attention also to the statements made by the PT and PCdoB leaders, defending to negotiate a “solution” to the crisis with the PSDB and others.
Temer in the present –just like it was with Dilma in the past– has no support by the population for a single reason: the cut of rights and the economic crisis are an increasingly harsher combination for those depend on our work to live. At the same time, the corruption denounces envolving the president and the scandal of Lava Jato are important elements of the current situation.
In this regard, the political crisis has become a problem for the institutions in our country. In other words, the political system of the rich lives its deepest crisis since the “re-democratization” period.
To the PT-PCdoB-MTST-PSOL bloc, this is a problem to be solved. In their own words, it is necessary to restore the legitimacy of the democracy. Of course: in the present, no one trusts that there is a democracy other than the bourgeois’, of Odebrech and the banks. Hence, what is essential to them is to “stabilize the country”.
A workers’ and popular solution for the crisis
We have defended to defeat Temer and also the corrupt Congress. Furthermore, we look to encourage Committees of Struggle and demonstrations in the neighborhoods and workplaces. We want to debate with every activist that a workers’ power is necessary, in opposition to a government of the rich, white minority in the country; and that the committees can be the embryo of this new power: a popular and workers’ rank and file democracy, built on our class’ real life.
To us, a workers’ power without bosses and corrupt ones, that surpasses this “democracy” for the rich, can guarantee the end of the attacks on our rights, dignified salaries, employment, housing, land, decent transportation, and public, quality health and education – through measures like expropriation and nationalization, putting the corrupt companies (JBS, Odebrecht, etc.) under workers’ control, and also prison and seizure of good of all the corrupt and corrupting ones, and the suspension of the debt payments to the bankers.
What strategy do the “Direct Elections Now” serve to?
To us, the strategic solution will come through demonstrations, outside the rich’s democracy, without alliances with the bourgeoisie and through a socialist programme that breaks with capitalism. The PT, PCdoB, and MTST do not agree with this strategy. Neither does the PSOL: in case of doubt, it is good to recall that this party already bet on the bourgeois democracy countless times. The latest example is the support given to Syriza, which today implements in Greece an economic policy that has nothing to envy from Temer’s.
Thus, they try to transform the struggle for Out with Temer into a struggle for the “regeneration” of democracy, on the defense of the Democratic State of Right, and they limit to present a new “left” government elected by the democracy of the rich as the solution; a government that will have to ally, necessarily, to other bourgeois sectors, and that we have no guarantees that will not attack the workers.
It is evident that a government of the PT, PMDB or PSDB cannot respond to the popular necessities like the ones mentioned above. Thus, it is a political crime to bet on the stabilization [of the regime] through elections.
So, the essential point of the debate with the proposal of “Direct Elections Now” comes out of this context: this slogan, as they are using it now, serves the strategy of the PT, which is to sustain the bourgeois democracy when its regime is falling apart. This has nothing to do with the “Direct Elections” mobilization when the dictatorship was falling, which even being a democratic demand was a natural consequence of the political process of a dictatorial regime’s fall.
Then, of course, before Temer’s fall and the imminence of a new president being elected by the corrupt Congress, at a moment when workers are not enough organized to seize the power, we will defend general elections under new rules. But there are two differences [between them and us] here:
First, we defend this but have no expectations on the possibility of it changing something for real. Even defending General Elections, we denounce the democratic-bourgeois regime, affirming that to vote will not change anything while pointing out that the existent democracy is against workers, Blacks, women, and LGBTs.
Second, we –therefore– do this with the goal of deepening the democratic-bourgeois crisis of the regime; to leave the bourgeoisie stunned; to deepen the wearing process of the bourgeois democracy in the workers’ consciousness; to deepen and strengthen the mobilization instead of channeling it through the polls.
In other words, before the possibility of the Congress electing a new president, the question is not for the people to vote but rather: through what policy, and serving what strategy, do we present such tactic?
And, today, to defend Direct elections now without questioning the regime; presenting a bourgeois election as the solution to our problems; resuming the defeated PT’s project of allying with the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois programme, is to deceive the workers: it is a betrayal.
Summarizing, the debate on the solution for the country is to help the PT form a new bloc of classes’ conciliation to sustain the political system, or to fight all the way for workers to break free, once and for all, from the old leaderships and walk their own way towards a workers’ government.
