Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Who does not sign the democratic letters

The August 11 manifestos for democracy create important difficulties for the progress of the ongoing coup and for an attempt at authoritarian institutionalization, should Jair Bolsonaro and his accomplices come to blows.

The more adhesions they have, the more obstacles. But an attempt at containment, only. There are many people who subscribe to the authoritarian program, with or without Bolsonaro; if not in 2022, then. There is a large, deep social and political current in favor of return, reaction and violence, institutional or direct, on the street. Those who omitted will join those who subscribe to the anti-democratic letter.

It is not a circumstantial crisis. Groups, categories, classes, whatever name you give them, found it convenient to defend their interests and claim more power or representation that they think they deserve through Bolsonaro or identify with what they think.

The agro-ogre, entrepreneurs of the caricatured ultraliberalism institutes, the military party, the evangelical party and the individual enemies of human diversity and equal rights are the best known faces of this anti-democratic current. Nor are its members who are frankly outlaws mentioned (militias, mining, environmental criminals, etc.).

It does not mean that any evangelical, military or rural entrepreneur makes this policy, but that these “parties”, in the broad sense, dominate the representation of these groups and give a certain conformation to their interests. At the moment, Bolsonaro is the vehicle for their political empowerment, which is how they subscribe to the destruction of the “system”, of democratic institutional guarantees, and the capture of the State, to sum up a complicated story.

As is well known, they want the final politicization of the Supreme Court, religion in the midst of politics, they accept the deactivation of institutions of control, such as the Attorney General’s Office, and the use of the Constitution as an instrument for petty partisan disputes and for the dismantling of control norms. (tax, criminal, electoral), as has been seen in the acts of the centrão, negotiator and for now, at least, bolsonarista.

Several business associations and others from the so-called “civil society” vacillate before the invitation to sign one of the two letters of support for democracy that will be the mottos of the acts on August 11, at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo.

One of them was launched by people connected to São Francisco, USP’s law school and is signed by individuals. The movement around another of these letters is being carried out by the Federation of Industries of São Paulo, Fiesp, “now under new management”, and has already obtained the support of Febraban.

As there are still 15 days left for the demonstration and many associations say they have not even seen a draft of the document, it is not correct to list hesitant, perhaps omitted, or even discuss their reasons. But soon we will know who swims in the anti-democratic current. Those who don’t even want to put an end to an explicit coup — that’s the least, because there will be much more to do to rebuild democracy, starting with the parties.

The manifesto written in São Francisco says what this democratic minimum is, in non-partisan terms: the idea of ​​basic civility programmed in the 1988 Constitution. , education, housing and public security”, economic and environmental development, respect for human diversity, an efficient State to take care of it all. There may be very different plans for tackling such problems, a topic of discussion for those who sign the democratic charter. For others, there’s no discussion, “period.”