Opinion – Latinoamérica21: Awakening the voice of Democrats

A sign of the times: we are experiencing a flurry of debates and publications on the crisis of democracy. But beyond the editorial language, the lessons of classical scholars persist on institutional rupture and the advent of authoritarianism typical of the 1970s and 1980s, prior to the so-called third wave of democracy.

Among its most prominent figures is Spanish professor Juan Linz, who was a professor at Yale University, for whom the failure of liberal, pluralist and representative regimes has always been better explained by the silence of democrats than by the noise of authoritarians.

This learning seems to explain phenomena such as the mobilizations of the last August 11 in Brazil around the so-called “Letter in Defense of the Democratic State of Law Forever”, sponsored and promoted by a wide and unthinkable constellation of social actors, personalities and celebrities, covering across the ideological spectrum.

From former presidents such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula, longstanding and longstanding rivals in elections, to agents as opposed as trade union centrals and business confederations. Likewise, individuals and collectives from the academic, artistic and sports worlds, social movements and diverse professional associations joined forces. In common, their adherence to a low-profile initiative launched by authorities and law students from the octogenarian University of São Paulo, converting it into a mass phenomenon.

In just a few days, a document designed to bring together internal positions in the university environment designed for no more than 300 people became the catalyst for a consensus in favor of institutionality on the part of about one million Brazilians who signed it, making clear the unacceptability of the authoritarian daydreams enunciated by the Executive around denouncing it as fraud and rejecting possible adverse results for the ruling party in the next presidential elections in October this year.

This ability to generate a moderate tone, but clear, focused on valuing representative and pluralist institutions and the republican foundations of public order (more than partisan policies or objectives), bringing together left, center and right, shows how democracy is defended in the most populous society in the region.

And it does so by prioritizing an approach that gathers wills around consensuses that are as powerful as they are essential, rather than seeking support for a potentially conflicting position that disrupts possible agreements. This is perhaps one of the best kept secrets of the largely successful Brazilian democracy.

Despite the suspicious impeachment of ex-president Dilma Rousseff, the questionable arrest of ex-president Lula, the regulatory excesses and corrupt practices of the PT in government and the election of a mediocre ex-military and defender of torture and dictatorship, Jair Bolsonaro, as the nation’s president, Brazil remained ahead of the vast majority of Latin American countries in terms of institutional quality and democratic progress.

According to The Economist’s democracy ranking, the country started the new century in fourth place (out of 20 countries) with an index of 6.48 in 2000. In 2022, even with the presidential threats against the judiciary and the electoral results, the murders of social and environmental activists, the pro-violence rhetoric of the Chief Executive, the increasing militarization of the State and the repressive expressions on the part of the public machine, Brazil improved its score, reaching an index of 7, 18, second only to Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile and Panama in terms of their democracy.

With ordinary citizens on the streets, but also with their elites publicly taking a stand against autocratic and sectarian deviations and countering a discourse of demonization of the other, the passive silence of democrats that so often paved the way for abuse of power and authoritarian enthronement is replaced. by the consensual, effective and dissuasive articulation of the supporters of the rule of law. In doing so, they increase the costs of populist and autocratic adventurism, revealing how to successfully neutralize the typical tyrannical temptations of our region’s leadership.