On the Electoral Boycott in Brazil
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
On the Electoral Boycott in Brazil
The electoral farce of the old Brazilian state is soon reaching its end, with the first round of elections that took place on the 2nd of October and the second round taking place on the 30th of October. The second round of the election will be between the current president Bolsonaro and the opportunist Luiz Inácio. The press monopolies and reactionaries are feeding the illusion of a “polarization”, this is a false and reactionary polarization; with which reaction seeks to pit masses against masses.. There is growing reactionary political violence, including one case of a peasant being murdered by a Bolsonarist co-worker after an argument about the elections. Bolsonaro is all but openly agitating for this violence, while the opportunist are playing the victims to cynically try to gain votes over the dead bodies.
Bolsonaro is preaching daily for the consummation of the military coup, but he does not have the support from the High Command of the military. As the High Command has a strong hegemonic position among the troops, he tries to inflame the masses against masses in order to provoke mass unrest and disorder to make the High Command more susceptible to the idea of full military intervention.
From the start of the reactionary electoral farce, revolutionaries have opposed it with a powerful active electoral boycott campaign at the national level, denouncing the false democracy, the electoral farce and coupism.
The editorial staff of AND has called for: “all consistent revolutionaries and democrats, to launch a lively and forceful boycott propaganda, linking it to the denunciation of the class nature of the old State as a special instrument of repression of the big bourgeoisie and landlords in the service of imperialism, principally Yankee imperialism. To explain that elections cannot solve the problems of the people and the nation, because they are a mechanism to legitimise all the rottenness that is there, legitimising as “democracy” the system of exploitation and oppression; that these elections serve to change the reactionary authorities, paid to apply the program dictated by the most powerful sectors of the dominant classes, lackeys of imperialism, and then withdraw, and thus reproduce in the people an infinite cycle of illusions, frustrations and new illusions to prevent the masses from launching themselves into independent historic action in a bloody and prolonged struggle for the destruction of the old state and the system of exploitation and oppression of which it is the guardian: semifeudality, bureaucratic capitalism and imperialist, mainly Yankee, domination. To show, finally, that breaking with this system means starting the Democratic, Agrarian and Anti-imperialist Revolution, starting by taking the land from the landowners, handing it over to the poor landless peasants or those with little land; that the masses themselves learn, in the course of the struggle, to govern and govern and control these zones in the form of Popular Assemblies which elect their delegates without taking them away from their work, without the right to special remuneration and with mandates revocable at any time; that the masses expand these zones part by part and in waves until they encompass the whole country, developing a national, scientific and mass culture, free from superstitions and all ideological slavery, building, with the New Democracy, the New Brazil. This is what should be propagated.”
50 million Brazilians as an objective expression of the just and correct position of the active boycott against the reactionary electoral farce.
We transcribe below, in full, an unofficial and preliminary translation of the last editorial of AND on the realisation of the first round of the electoral farce:
“Weekly Editorial – Almost 50 million reject the electoral farce
In the first round of the general elections on 2 October, what was most striking – including the worrying columnists in the pay of the media monopolies – was the high rate of abstentions, invalid and blank votes. In abstention alone, it was the highest figure – in official data – since 1998.
There were more than 38 million Brazilians who, registered with the TSE, did not show up or did not vote for any candidate, according to official data from the court itself. Official figures, but underestimated, because they do not include young people between 16 and 18 years of age who have not registered with the electoral justice system, nor those citizens who, despite being obliged to do so, do not respond to appeals to regularise their electoral registration.
The official number of abstentions (people eligible to vote and registered who do not attend) is 32.8 million, and invalid and blank votes are 5.5 million, totalling 38.2 million. There are approximately 10.9 million people eligible to vote (able to vote) who did not register with the electoral justice system and therefore also abstained.
Counting those excluded, there are at least 49.1 million people eligible to vote who did not register, did not attend or voted blank and null, against about 57.3 million votes obtained by Luiz Inácio, first runner-up and 51.1 obtained by Bolsonaro, runner-up. That is 49.1 million people, flesh and blood, who despite the punishments and all the blackmail to vote for the “least worst”, refused to cast their vote for any candidate or did not mobilise to regularise their situation in the TSE. It is worth noting that the highest abstention rate in the country (official data) was in Rondônia, with 24.7%.
The ideological bombardment and blackmail on all sides to ensure a high turnout in the electoral farce was as rarely seen in the history of this old republic. It is justified: the high rate of abstention, nulls and blanks recorded in every election is the result of the deep stage of decomposition of the reactionary political system and, moreover, aggravates this crisis as it grows. As a result of the TSE’s war effort, there is a resounding failure.
Why does the electoral boycott only grow? Because, at different levels of consciousness, all these people fundamentally do not believe in this reactionary process at all. They do not believe it, because, in their concrete experience, it is confirmed that the electoral farce can only produce the same result: the increasing worsening of their living conditions, interspersed with rare and very brief periods of less hardening.
It is essential not to see this as depoliticisation. On the contrary. This realisation is the living, if still fragmented, knowledge of the masses. As the mass revolutionary movement advances, joining these desperate masses, their fragmented, sensitive knowledge is transformed into comprehensive scientific knowledge as they transform their living conditions through class struggle. In this way, the masses come to recognise that bourgeois democracy is only the mask of the real problem: the dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and the latifundia, servants of imperialism, mainly US imperialism. And they recognise that the complete transformation of the country will not come about through elections, but through the revolutionary overthrow of these classes and the emergence of a New State supported and governed by the masses themselves, the New Democracy.
Another important point. The election result, which takes the presidential election to the second round and shows that Bolsonaro still has strength, does not surprise the consistent revolutionaries and democrats. The reactionary sector, which rages against the decaying bourgeois democracy, preaching the march towards fascism, will not lose its strength, but will strengthen it, while the crisis of bourgeois democracy continues. Behold, an inept man like Bolsonaro, demoralised to the bone, even he, does not entirely lose his mass base, purely and simply because a certain important segment of them believe in the half-truths of the denunciation that, hypocritically, the captain of the mata makes of the rottenness of the old democracy.
The crisis of bourgeois democracy and the tendency towards fascism will endure and feed back on each other until they are definitively swept away by the uninterrupted revolution of new democracy to Socialism. Either the revolution advances, or the tendency to fascism advances day by day, with or without a “democratic” mask. There is no third way.”
AND have been carrying out sales brigades for their special edition on electoral boycott. These large agitation brigades were held in various busy areas, like the streets, bus stops, squares and universities, and they denounced the old democracy of the old landlord-bureaucratic State and the impossibility of winning rights for the people through the electoral farce, and they denounced the coup that is in progress in Brazil.
Worker stands next to the agitator with the megaphone while a photo is taken, showing agreement with the agitation. Photo: AND Database
A worker greets members of the AND newsroom as soon as she hears the commotion in the megaphone and reads the track. Photo: AND Database
Members of the editorial staff of AND carry out sales brigade of issue n° 249 in Largo da Carioca. Photo: AND Database
The Rio de Janeiro DNA Support Committee organizes the DNA sales brigade on the trains on 09/22. Photo: AND Database
Brigade members of the Support Committee for the DNA of São Gonçalo carry out sales brigade for issue n° 249 on 09/22. Photo: AND Database
Sales Brigade for issue n° 249 in São Gonçalo calls the people to an electoral boycott. Photo: AND Database
Activist from the RJ’s DNA support committee organizes special edition sales brigade n° 249 in Complexo do Alemão (RJ). Photo: AND Database
Special edition sales brigades n° 249 are held at UEL, Paraná. Photo: AND Database
Activists from the Campinas AND Support Committee held an edition 249 sales brigade at the Central Terminal of Campinas. Photo: And Database
Activist from the SP support committee talks to a worker in São Paulo about Edition N° 249 and the electoral boycott. Photo: AND Database
Workers buy Edition N° 249 of brigadier. Photo: AND Database
A worker observes the agitation of a brigadier over Issue n°249 and the electoral boycott. Photo: AND Database
Workers buy issue n° 249 during a sales brigade in São Paulo. Photo: AND Database
Workers on the trains expressed great interest in the agitation for the electoral boycott and the newspaper AND. Photo: AND Database
A worker expresses her support for the boycott campaign and the newspaper AND by writing messages in the purchased edition. Photo: AND Database
Special edition sales brigade n° 249 calls on the people of Porto Alegre to boycott the elections. Photo: AND Database
On 09/27, the Support Committee of Recife (PE) held a sales brigade for special edition n° 249, calling for an electoral boycott. Photo: AND Database
Activists from the LPM of Betim hold a sales brigade for the edition n° 249 of AND in Vila Bandeira Vermelha. Photo: AND Database
Activists from the Support Committee for the DNA of Florianópolis (SC) held a sales brigade for issue n° 249, calling for an electoral boycott, along with the product stall. Photo: AND Database
Support Committee for the Espirito Santo DNA organizes an agitation brigade for the electoral boycott with old editions, on 08/31, in Vila Velha. Photo: AND Database
It has also been reported on graffiti with the slogans «Don’t vote, struggle!», «Down with the electoral farce! For a New and True Democracy!» and «Elections no! People’s War yes!»
Graffiti can be found in the Penha neighborhood, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Tesourinha Street, in the Jd neighborhood. Claudia, in Pinhais. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Jacarezinho street, in the Pineville neighborhood, in Pinhais. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Jacob Macanham Street, in the Jd neighborhood. Claudia, in Pinhais. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in Pinhais. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in Maringá. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Avenida Comendador Franco with the Linha Verde. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on the Eletrolux wall, in the Guabirotuba neighborhood. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found at the Curitiba Polytechnic Center. Photo: AND Database
Photos: AND Database
Graffiti found in the West Zone of São Paulo (SP). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found at the entrance of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), next to the entrance of the University Restaurant, in the district of Barão Geraldo, Campinas (SP). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found near the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in Campinas, São Paulo. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found near the Barão Geraldo university district, in Campinas, São Paulo. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in Guarulhos. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in the West Zone of São Paulo. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Avenida Sertorio, near the Supermarket BIG, in Porto Alegre (RS). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Av. Marcelino Pires, in Dourados (MS). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found near Parque do Lago, in Dourados (MS). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found near the State University of Londrina (UEL). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti in Maringá (PR) denounces the electoral farce and defends a New and True Democracy. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found near Avenida Presidente Vargas, the main street in downtown Rio de Janeiro (RJ). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in Presidente Medici (RO). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Anhanguera Highway, near Campinas (SP). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in the West Zone of São Paulo (SP). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found near the Municipal Environment Department of Pinhais, in Pinhais (PR). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found in downtown Curitiba (PR). Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on the wall of Companhia Paranaense de Energia (Copel), in Bairro Alto, Curitiba. Photo: AND Database
Graffiti found on Avenida Farrapos, at the Train Station, in Porto Alegre (RS). Photo: AND Database
The perspectives are bright – the old state and its political system are in a worsening crisis, the illusions of democracy are falling apart. The situation calls the masses to mobilise for the defence of their rights, that are being shredded by the old state, in the conditions of the deepening general crisis of imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism in Brazil, to mobilise against the reactionary electoral farce and the military coup that is in progress, it calls for the revolutionary struggle for the new democracy that is the only thing can guarantee and extend the rights and liberties of the people and ensure better living conditions for them.
The masses are the makers of history. The old Brazilian state is decomposing and the people have a bright future ahead of them, filled with struggle and victory.