ALERT: Democracy Dismembered

The unthinkable but not wholly unexpected has happened. After Sunday’s election, the Liberal Party, PL, the mouthpiece for the Bolsonaro clan, now dominates both houses of the Brazilian parliament, the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Whilst the presidential election will go to a second round of voting on October 25th, there is a distinct possibility that the country will be governed for at least the next four years by a deeply conservative, religious, and authoritarian cabal headed by a man under investigation for corruption with known links to organised crime. It is yet another wakeup call, as if one was needed, for democrats everywhere. The scary thing is, that the ascension of this immensely powerful block with overt neo-fascist tendencies has occurred within the law. The Bolsonaristas didn’t  need to call on the troops this time round. They have been elected. In the face of the collapse of all reason, the  majority of the population voted to send an army of politicians to parliament who will slash social and educational programmes, liberate the sale of arms, open  the country to American business, repeal environmental protection laws, encourage the deforestation and exploitation of the Amazon, and build five massive El Salvador type prisons. Furthermore, they are promising to change the constitution in their own interests, to seize the Supreme Court, and to grant an amnesty to all those involved in the violent assault on parliament in 2023. If all this comes to pass, Brasil will lose the checks and counterbalances against the abuse of power that were enshrined in the constitution after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1985. How this has come to pass is no great mystery. Many folk voted not on the basis of any concrete programme or policy, but simply because they were bored with the Workers Party, PT, or because they considered Flavio Bolsonaro ‘young and good-looking.’ More strategically, the far right, backed by finance capital, has orchestrated a well organised social media campaign that has spread disinformation about PT, including the lie that it’s responsible for recent  pension fund scandals, banking frauds and judicial malfeasance. In all of this they have been ably backed by the US that has paid far-right influencers, blocked social media accounts of those on the left, including that of President Lula, and openly attempted to destabilise the government by imposing arbitrary tariffs and closing its embassies. All in all, it is a declaration of war, akin to a political and cultural counterrevolution, and as in all conflicts, the main casualties will be the working class and poor who are likely to see many of the gains made by PT in education, health and social justice dismantled. This will include the abandonment of the current plan to reduce the working week from six to five days. The ramifications of the right-wing shift in Brasil are quite literally seismic. The biggest country in Latin America and amongst the ten most powerful economies in the world, the fall of Brasil, will complete the transformation of the continent, that only three years was dominated by left wing governments, into a panorama of vassal states subservient to the US. An already fragile democracy hangs by a thread.