Lula was sentenced to nine years and six months of imprisonment and he will appeal such sentence in freedom. He was tried for one of the five corruption cases in which he is being accused. The process that led to this sentence was the case of the triplex, in Guarujá [São Paulo’s coast].
By PSTU National Leadership – Brazil
Facing this fact, part of the bourgeois leaders (all corrupts) commemorated. The PT, on its side, victimises itself, as if it was a mere political persecution of the PT for “defending the poor against the market,” which is clearly a lie.
The PMDB, PSDB, and PT governments (allied to the DEM, PP, Solidariedade, and other bourgeois parties) always ruled for the JBS, Odebrecht, OAS, Itaú, Bradesco, Volkswagen, GM, the Oi, Globo, Embraer, Santander, Gerdau, etc. They were all bought by them. This was never as clear to everyone as it is now.
Neither one of these sectors is right. The PSDB, PMDB, Caiado, Dória, Aécio, etc. cannot say that Lula’s sentence is fair without acknowledging that they are completely corrupt too; nor can the PT say that this is a bourgeois persecution without acknowledging that it is the same bourgeoisie whos interests he defended when he was in power.
The working class does not have to choose between the fire and the frying pan. This is not a choice. Between one and the other, we do not choose any of them; we must walk an independent path. We do not trust or applaud the bourgeois justice (and even less Dória, Caiado, Bolsonaro, etc.) nor do we commit ourselves to defend Lula and the PT, because they ruled a corrupt government dedicated to serving the interests of the big businesses. Weren’t many of the proven corrupts who are part of Temer’s government also part of the PT governments?
An entire generation of workers was involved in the construction of the PT and it really had the hope of building a new society. However, the PT leadership betrayed their dream many years ago when it decided to rule this system along with and for the bourgeoisie. For a long time, they only ruled for the ones above and deceived the ones below.
The PT leadership started to adore and be part of the employer’s world. José Alencar, the businessman who was Lula’s deputy and good friend, was not a friend of the workers of his own factory, Coteminas, whom he exploited without any compassion. Bumlai, another Lula’s friend, a cattle rancher from Mato Grosso, treats the workers who work for him as the Casa Grande [the landowners] treated the Senzala [slaves’ accommodation]. The Odebrecht’s owner (father), the Angola’s dictator, and many other great friends of Lula and the PT, show that the PT run an entirely bourgeois and pro-imperialist government, along with corrupts and corrupting ones. Bourgeois governments are corrupt. Corruption is part of capitalism, and the PT decided to rule capitalism for the capitalists.
Even Maluf recently defended Lula. We could continue quoting endless pages of spurious relationships.
Frei Beto told the press that this sentence does not discredit anyone, comparing Lula with Vladimir Herzog and other martyrs of the dictatorship. However, the comparison with Vladimir Herzog and others pursued by the dictatorship, including Lula in the past, is not a correct comparison.
In 1980, Lula, Zé Maria of the PSTU, and dozens of unionists were arrested by the “Drops” [Department of Political and Social Order] and framed in the National Security Law for leading a workers’ strike and challenging the dictatorship. This imprisonment fills us with pride, ennobles and raises the morale of the working class. Because even though Lula is finally considered innocent in this process, the current context shows that the PT is mixed with the PMDB, PSDB, PP, and others of the same kind, in a huge corruption process.
No one, obviously, can defend authoritarianism, imprisonment without evidence, or any limitation to the right of defense or democratic freedoms, nor can anyone not know that the bourgeois justice is not fair. This debate is not about that. But the current Lula’s situation is not a product of a political persecution of the working class: it is a dispute between two bourgeois fields, within the bourgeois democracy in crisis.
The current situation is the result of a specific policy and choice. The PT decided to rule the Brazilian capitalism in alliance with those bourgeois and corrupt parties. Let’s not forget that Temer was Dilma’s vice-president. The consequences are these that we see today.
It is also very hypocritical to talk about a “State of Exception” because of the imprisonment of half a dozen politicians and businessmen. This “excuses” the democracy of the rich, which is not only corrupt but also extremely authoritarian: the poor black people of the periphery live a genocide (556,000 people were murdered in Brazil in twelve years); there is a mass imprisonment process in the country. There are more than 600,000 prisoners and almost 300,000 are victims of coercive pretrial detention, and without any trial. Most of them are young, black, poor, with no criminal record. Incredible as it may seem, this situation made a leap during the PT governments. In other words, under the PT we had a “Rule of Law” just because only the poor were incarcerated without a trial (ask Rafael Braga about it!),[1] and now we have a “State of Exception” because of the Lava Jato Operation…? Holy patience!
Such speech is even more repulsive when they dismantle a General Strike and negotiate behind the curtain with Temer and Rodrigo Maia [Chamber’s president]. Or when the police throw bombs at us uninterruptedly for protesting in Brasilia against Temer and against the reforms, knowing that they are the product of this democracy of the rich and the repressive laws passed during the PT governments.
We defend the imprisonment and confiscation of property of ALL corrupt and corrupting ones. And we are against the suffocation of investigations against any one of those corrupt politicians, no matter the party.
To some extent, nobody is happy with the fact that the greatest exponent built by the Brazilian working class in its history ends up being condemned for corruption because he decided to be on the bourgeoisie’s side. However, at the same time, the end of this tragedy and this farce that the PT built is not surprising. It shows that the PT and Lula no longer have conditions to represent the working class because they chose other friends and another path.
The working class must struggle to knock down the reforms, for Out with Temer and All of Them; for the expropriation and nationalization under the workers’ control of the JBS, Odebrecht, OAS, etc., as well as the imprisonment of all the corrupt and corrupting ones and the suspension of the payment of the debt to the bankers, for the rich ones to pay the price of the crisis. In this struggle, we must seek to build a socialist government of workers, which rules through popular councils, to guarantee employment, wages, rights, education, health, agrarian reform, and the end of male-chauvinism, racism, violence, and LGBTphobia .
Lula has the right to appeal and defend himself. But it is not the current task of the working class, in any way, to carry out or participate in acts in Lula’s defense or against him. Our task is to struggle against the reforms, to knock down Temer and this Congress, and at the same time to build an alternative of class independence, outside the PT’s field of class collaboration and the bourgeois parties’ field.
The most important task of the working class is to forge a new organization that does not reconcile with the bourgeoisie, controlled from below, revolutionary, and not a simple instrument to manage the current system. In the end, instead of the PT changing the bourgeois state, it was the state and the bourgeoisie which changed the PT. This should be an important lesson.
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Translation: Misty M.
Notes:
[1] Rafael Braga Vieira is the only one arrested during the protests of 2013. He is a black man from the periphery, and he was detained for carrying a deodorant in his bag, imprisoned without trial, and sentenced to 11 years in prison in April of 2017.
How did Lula get to this situation?
