Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Pantanal: Terceira Via re-releases his soap opera without an audience and without a plot

The Third Way hates its candidates. Why would the electorate like them?

Half of the PSDB wants to overthrow João Doria. Half of União Brasil wants to expel Sergio Moro or make the ex-judge kneel in the corn, wearing a donkey hat. The MDB wants to file Simone Tebet as soon as the regimental deadline has passed.

Ciro Gomes, from PDT, remains. But Ciro was not even called into the fray. He had the privilege of not getting tripped.

What does the Third Way want?

Cast a “sticky, sticky” candidate. Want to hit these internet tests to see if the candidate will get enough click, like a tiktok dance. There has always been marketing (Jânio Quadros, Fernando Collor), but even raw hacking was less immediate.

For most parties, if the little dance doesn’t get a like, the political company changes its investment plan. Better to spend on increasing benches, which give a bit more to electoral funds, more votes to sell and more positions of power in Congress, in the clique that distributes amendments or in some public office that still makes money.

But “the center” and the less savage elite still want a candidate. The tiktok of the time could be Eduardo Leite, former toucan governor of Rio Grande do Sul. It does not matter here whether Leite is a good candidate. The parties are not interested.

There are no applications because there is no alternative program. Program: say something that the electorate wants to pay attention to, that has political support, technical feasibility and social support, that gives credible hope, so that the government doesn’t go to the wall in months, taking the country along. Do these conditions not seem relevant? Consider the case of Dilma 2.

Besides this nonsense about “saving the country from extremists” and the nonsense about “avoiding populism”, what does the Third Way imply? That would do more of the same of a FHC government (before it was). Or I would make a Michel Temer’s “Bridge to the Future” in which there are fewer buses with politicians.

They don’t even have the pragmatism to ask why the toucans lost five elections in a row, being relegated to the second division in 2018. They don’t even remember that the Temer government was the most unpopular in history.

Is it with this outfit that Terceira Via wants to go to the samba to which it is not even being invited? This is not to say that the country does not need “reforms” (it needs to be turned inside out), but to say that this conversation does not convince anyone.

Just “getting an economist” with a “plan” won’t do either. Even economists know that, without a strong political agreement, they cannot survive (apart from the trauma Joaquim Levy, Dilma 2’s liberal, sabotaged by toucans and PT). This arrangement needs social bases and agreements, hope that things will work out. At the beginning of Lula 1, life was bad, but the people had a couple of years of patience.

In 2023 it will be worse. The economic depression will complete a decade. If a government does not propose a profound change and does not convince large and small parts of the people, it will live in a state of latent insurrection (rapid breakdown in polls, loss of parliamentary support) or, worse, patent, with turmoil. More serious, democracy already has a quarter of the electorate to overthrow it (they are the Bolsonaristas in the first round). The revolt may have more supporters.

The Third Way has no alternative country idea to present. It re-enacts its ugly Pantanal, with no plot and no audience. So you don’t win, apart from marketing miracles. If it wins, it won’t govern, just as the PT will not govern if it doesn’t have a plan for change and a broad agreement.

Jair Bolsonaro does not want to govern. We know what he wants.