Lula was denounced by the MPF [Federal Public Ministry], and there is a possibility for him to be imprisoned. Immediately after, there was a trench, going from the PT, the PSOL, and all his supporters, to defend him. The PT defends Lula by simply denying the accusations. They want to convince the country Lula “did not know” anything about the national scheme of corruption that existed in Brazil during the PT’s turns. And also that Lula did not take personal advantage out of that corruption. The triplex and the farm would not be part of his property. The talks quoted at US$250.000 would not be part of a corruption scheme.
By Eduardo Almeida.
To believe that would be almost the same as believing in Santa Claus and the Eastern Bunny. The truth is the PT, during thirteen long years, ruled together with and for the big bourgeoisie of this country. He ruled for the banks and multinationals, for the agrarian and landowner bourgeoisie. He implemented the imperialist plans. He was deified by Bush and Obama. Dilma was also saluted by the imperialist governments and press during her first turn. The PT government led the military intervention in Haiti serving the multinationals.
Together with this, the PT acquired the same corruption vices of the PSDB, the PMDB and the PP. Not by chance it had on its bases renamed corrupts, such as Michel Temer [current president], Fernando Color [president during 1900-1992, when overthrown by masses’ mobilization], Paulo Maluf [Federal Deputy by the Progressive Part – PP], Renan Calheiros [Senator, important political figure of Brazil, involved in several corruption schemes], Jader Barbalho [Federal Deputy by the PMDB] and many others. The PT took advantage of the corruption scheme armed during the PSDB government, and created others.
Its leaders ended up having the consumption habits of the bourgeoisie. They became friends of great bourgeois and partners of the companies. Zé Dirceu [José Dirceu, with several fraud and criminal accusations, linked to the PT governments since 2003] became a lawyer and mediator of the major companies’ businesses in Brazil, Latin America as a whole, and Africa. Lula himself, through his son, became partner of the Oi [telephony and telecommunications] and the JBS [biggest private company in the country]. It is the same gentrification process of Daniel Ortega, leader of the Frente Sandinista, today one of the major millionaires of Nicaragua; or with Diosdado Cabello, one of the main representatives of the Venezuelan Bolibourgeoisie, who grew with Chavism in the power.
By leading major corruption schemes, the PT leaders began to take part for themselves too. Lula’s famous triplex and farm are part of that, and let us just say, minor parts. There is much more.
The truth, known by everyone who does not go along with the PT fairy tail, is that the PT is as corrupt as the PSDB and the PMDB, and Lula and Zé Dirceu are as corrupt as Aécio and Alckmin.
It is true the bourgeois justice reached the PT in the Mensalão scheme [monthly based bribes to deputies], and now with the Lava Jato [money laundry]. And it is true it left the PSDB in the backround.
The PT served the bourgeoisie until it did not have the support of the working class anymore. It is now paying for the treason to the workers by implementing neo-liberal plans, guaranteeing record profits to the banks, ensuring the victory of the agro-business in the country, stalling the agrarian reform. The bourgeoisie decided to discard the PT when the workers took their support from Lula and the PT. And the workers did that due to the continuing misery, the brutal crisis of public health and education, and everything we already know of Brazil; in other words, due to the implementation of the bourgeoisie’s plans by the PT.
Now the bourgeoisie wants to ensure the invalidation of Lula’s campaign in 2018. If the PT is not good enough to hold the workers, it is better to bet on one of the traditional bourgeois parties, like the PSDB or even the PMDB. And they use the bourgeois justice for that.
It was impossible for the bourgeoisie to touch Lula when he still had the support of the working class. Not even the dictatorship could do that. If nowadays Lula is completely defensive and might be imprisoned, it is because the absolute majority of the workers repudiate him. And this breakup of the working class with Lula and the PT is the most progressive element of the political situation in the country.
To defend Lula together with the PT is to deny this extremely progressive breakup. To defend Lula by denying the evident reality of corruption to say “it has been made up by the right wing” is a catastrophic error.
But there are also those who make a defense of Lula “through the left”. They admit Lula and the PT ruled together with the bourgeoisie, but they affirm that is not the reason why Lula is being attacked, but because of his past as a Unionist. And they defend Lula as “part of the working class”. They affirm they would only accept Lula’s prison if the workers were the ones to put him in jail. Like workers’ committees imposing a workers’ justice can only exist during revolutionary situations, much more ahead than the current Brazilian situation, this “left” sector assumes the defense of Lula and his impunity.
This is a major mistake. It means defending who once was a bourgeois government. It is not correct to define a government in a capitalist society by its rulers’ origins; it is define by the class it serves to. The PT governments were bourgeois because they were instruments for the policy of the big bourgeoisie. The evident acts of corruption of the PT took place as part of a bourgeois government.
How can these “leftist” sectors defend Lula as part of the working class? Were the PT governments workers’ governments? The workers believing so back then is natural, but these new PT supporters know those were bourgeois governments. Even worst: when the workers break with the PT, how to defend Lula against the workers’ current consciousness?
Besides, the new PT supporters face a paradox: what should be the program of the revolutionary left against corruption? One of the main elements is prison and means confiscation of all the corrupt ones, right? Would that no apply to Lula? Or Lula is not corrupt? Or should we have separated programs for the “right-wing” and the “left-wing” corrupts? And what about Zé Dirceu? Do the new PT supporters also defend Zé Dirceu’s liberation?
Is it that the difference of treatment of the bourgeois justice with the PT should make us defend it? On the contrary: we defend prison and expropriation of all the corrupt ones. And that means to demand prison for Lula too, and also Aécio and Renan, for being part of the Lava Jato; of Alckmin, for stealing the school meals, and so it goes. To have any other policy would make us accomplices of Lula, and would completely weaken the struggle against the corruption -of the PSDB and PSMB too-.
The true left is proud of being revolutionary and independent of the bourgeoisie, it cannot be an accomplice of who betrayed the workers to be friends with the bankers, the constructor companies’ owners, of Bush and Obama. Out with all of them!
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Translation: Sofía Ballack.
