Helio Beltrão: An electoral letter

The letter for democracy prepared by USP remains in evidence. It aims to warn against allegedly subversive speeches by President Jair Bolsonaro about electronic voting machines, as well as speculation that he will incite the mob and carry out a coup d’état if he loses the elections. It is a card against a single target, therefore with an electoral connotation, albeit subtle.

Absolute respect for the results of the polls and the electoral process is non-negotiable. There is no room for relativization or rationalization. This question doesn’t make me sleepy, despite the embarrassment of the meeting with the ambassadors. Brazil is much more institutionalized than many believe. The loser at the polls just walks away, period. To imagine a different path is to ignore and underestimate our institutions (including the Armed Forces) and the maturity of our Rule of Law.

The letter contains the tacit premise that the president’s repeated criticism of the electronic voting machines is premeditated: they build the pretext for him to contest the election result, mobilize the Bolsonaristas and apply the coup, in case of defeat. It rules out the hypothesis that the president truly mistrusts the inviolability of the ballot boxes and the process of counting and totaling, or wants to mitigate this risk. There seems to be a belief among the signatories that the fairness is 100%, with no possibility of malicious attack, fraud or error. Anyone who does not agree with the 100% fairness, without risks, of the upcoming elections is taken for a coup, enemy of democracy.

Among staunch opponents, the accusation of an imminent coup d’etat has been recurrent since 2018. Apparently his narrative is gaining traction. In the United States, it was no different with Trump, still accused by the left of having attempted a coup. The word coup, so abused, lost much of its meaning. Coup came to encompass not only acts against the Constitution, but hyperbolic speeches, blunders and even speculation about the future.

The defense of democracy, that is, of our institutions and the Federal Constitution (denied by the PT in 1988), requires us to be more comprehensive.

The threat also comes, for example, from those who propose external control of judges and the Judiciary for partisan interests or change of rules in the STF, such as increasing the number of ministers. It comes from those who propose to establish councils and committees to manage society, supplanting constitutional institutions. It comes from those who propose to control the media or persecute journalists. It comes from those who apply prior censorship and arrest citizens and even representatives of the people based on speeches considered unacceptable.

It comes from those who propose a society based on equality of results, supplanting free association. It comes from those who have a history of buying the votes of representatives of the people and breaking tax laws for electoral benefit. It comes from those who use public money to finance governments of ideologically aligned countries, in favor of a supra-alliance of mutual protection for perpetuation in power. It comes from those who support Maduro and Castros, considered “democratic”, and who blame the opposition for having become the poorest country in the Americas. It comes from those who apply systemic corruption as a government program.

In fact, the memory of the Brazilian is short. The perception of democratic danger in the current government overshadows the demonstrably arbitrary character of the group that wants to return.

Our political practice in recent times has been based on the stigmatization of the opponent as an enemy of the country. The letter does not escape this zeitgeist either; in fact, it accentuates it.

Hard times. As the Baron of Mauá said about the War in Paraguay: “This damned war will be the ruin of the victor and the destruction of the vanquished.”