Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Referendum on Bolsonaro erases other essential debates

The possibility of reelection gives the vote the character of a referendum of the first term of presidents. When it comes to the reappointment of a Jair Bolsonaro (PL), it is also a question of whether or not to endorse the demolition of democracy and civility, a more extreme decision that relegates other issues to the periphery of the debate.

Given that the main challenger is Lula da Silva, the vote still has something of a jury about the PT’s political and judicial history. Thanks to Bolsonar’s depravity, topics such as “God, country and family”, other cultural wars and fictions such as the “communist threat” also occupy the center of the conversation.

Real economic debates are rarely the subject of an election campaign. In this depraved environment, they disappeared from even the conversation of more enlightened circles. In the worsened trance we have been living in since 2013, we have been postponing “sine die” to deal with our critical situation.

It doesn’t mean that everything will explode in 2023. Countries sometimes languish for decades, just look at the neighbourhood.

Next year we have another appointment with a reckoning, literally. We can miss the meeting or consultation, pretending that we don’t have serious economic problems and fantasizingly wait for them to pass, with which the disease can become critical and fatal for democracy too.

An example. Next year, either the remainder of the spending ceiling must fall or the politically and socially unfeasible alternative of an immediate draconian spending adjustment remains.

Economists Braulio Borges and Manoel Pires published in “Conjuntura Econômica” an estimate of the possible increase in the deficit. It gives 4.2% of GDP, around R$430 billion, equivalent to more than a fifth of all current federal expenditure. More precisely, it is an estimate of the risk of an additional deficit, which may or may not occur, depending on political decisions and the ups and downs of the world economy, among others.

The extension of the R$ 600 aid, tax reductions (on energy or the madness of the readjustment of the IR table), readjustment of servers, less revenue from commodities, skeletons of precatories, more expenses with the machine and public investment , sometimes below the critical level, more spending on interest, etc.

Several economists, such as Nelson Barbosa, Dilma Rousseff’s Minister of Finance, as well as Borges and Pires, but not only, suggest that 2023 is a year of restrained spending leave, a necessary “waiver” while a new way is invented. to avoid the unlimited growth of public debt—a more rational variant of the spending ceiling.

It won’t be good, but it must be inevitable. But it can be a disaster if the creditors (“the market”) judge that this is just a sham. Or if an immediate program of profound change is not also adopted, driven by capable people with political support, “reforms”, with or without quotation marks, that change taxation, budget priorities or that increase government revenue, for example. This will hurt and will lead to a conflict between losers and winners. Facilitating private investment and using the little public investment smarter also helps and hurts less or not at all.

It is also possible to push everything with the belly and hope that another quadrennium of growth at 1.4% per year does not result in the revival of authoritarian projects. Or getting used to the swampy stability of continuing poverty with chronic social or criminal violence and further degradation.

Maybe the debate will start as soon as the result of the election is known, at least. Whatever comes out of the polls, there’s no way the “good times” are back.