The right must vote for Lula out of self-interest. The center too, following the example of deputy Tabata Amaral (PSB-SP), against the Congress leaders, who want to liquidate Brazil at the fair’s xepa.
I argue like someone who has been criticizing Lula since 2005 and laments that he is partially responsible for the lack of leaders in the party without the negative charisma of the heirs he invented. As a carioca, I am disgusted by the open bolsonarismo of the PT in Rio, which broke the agreement made by the ex-president with Marcelo Freixo (PSB), in a sign of commitment to maintaining the power of the militias in the state – not, as they claim, to bar the Alessandro Molon’s candidacy for the Senate.
When I refer to the interests of the right, I am not talking about the beelzebub panicking at the real chance of being arrested after the defeat or his surroundings, united in greed, in obscene theocratic fervor and in hatred of Brazil.
I speak of the right that believes in a liberal economic policy without thieving evangelical pastors, parasite militias bleeding the treasury at the expense of the sweat of workers and businessmen whose behavior makes the carioca bicheiros of my childhood look like civic leaders.
In short, I’m talking about what’s left of the anti-Lula political terrain that is pro-Brazil. I write from the USA, where I have followed, for decades, the involution of the American right that resulted in Donald Trump. It was not an accident on the way, but a hideous float finishing off a parade in Rio’s Apoteose square. When it became apparent that Trump was an existential threat to moderate conservatives, many voted for Joe Biden.
Why should Brazil not leftist and not allied to wanton nihilism supported by the centrão vote for Lula? Because it wants to open companies, hire skilled labor, support scientific research, study and earn a lot of money in the financial market relying on institutions and laws, without being at the mercy of the tyranny of three Powers increasingly organized by gangs.
Yes, the PT caudillo facilitated large-scale corruption, but he did not attempt to demolish the rule of law. And he offered no illegal resistance to spend 580 days in a cell by order of the judge who arrested him on demand to help elect the monster as his ally – the same one that today babbles delusions about reacting to gunfire when the Federal Police knock on the door.
This country that rejects extremism is interested, as a survival instinct, not to continue betting that 33 million Brazilians think it’s normal to go hungry to prevent gays from getting married.
The adhesion of more than 700 thousand to the charter in defense of the democratic rule of law is an auspicious sign. The right that wanted, at all costs, to avoid the return of Lula, knows that, in order to compete to legislate and govern, it needs a country — not the skeleton that will leave us if the lifelong unemployed person who, in the 1980s, planned to remain in power put bombs in barracks to get a pay raise.
The crass jecas of Faria Lima, the arsonists of agribusiness and the invertebrates of Avenida Paulista may have had enough of eating porridge on the edge of fascism. Perhaps now they have begun to understand the price of denying that the agenda they supported is not conservative or Christian, it is terrorist and demolition.
If they want to keep taking off for Paris and keep the privilege of taking a vacation from the Brazilian martyrdom, they need a country they can return to.
