AND Weekly Editorial – Foretold frustration and inevitable resistance

Editorial Staff of AND

21 September 2022

Weekly editorial – Foretold frustration and inevitable resistance

Henrique Meirelles’ public support for Luiz Inácio Alckmin’s presidential candidacy, made official on 19 September, comes as no surprise. It is yet another move by the establishment at the electoral table and the pleasure of opportunism in making the financial oligarchy visible, guaranteeing commitments to the most nefarious creatures of national subjugation. The slogan is: the spending ceiling will not be broken. Lies, of course. First, it is the candidate’s early confession that he will not keep his election promises and, second, when the election year arrives, in need of votes, for a few crumbs from the people, he will break it. Nothing too surprising.

Researchers at the Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (Ibre/FGV) calculate that, given temporary expenses, the readjustment of public servants, deferred bills and revenue losses, the next government will have a fiscal hole of R$ 430 billion in the budget. This includes R$ 60 billion just to maintain the R$ 600 million Auxílio Brasil payment. If the STF determines the payment of precatóriosnext year, the situation will worsen. Faced with the high risk of financial bankruptcy, imperialism is only raising interest rates to finance the public debt.

The situation is serious, “fiscal bombs” are exploding in the lap of the next president, added to the crisis of decomposition of imperialism with a new cycle of overproduction and the crisis of decomposition of local bureaucratic capitalism. The tiny, slow recovery of the economy, in the medium term, is becoming increasingly laughable, if it were not so tragic for the people.

Luiz Inácio and opportunism are at a crossroads, and they are lighting candles to god and the devil: they promise the masses – to win the elections – that they will establish better living conditions, cosmetic changes only possible through high spending of public finances, whose debt already exceeds R$ 7 trillion; at the same time, they promise to strictly follow the fiscal dictates of the international financial oligarchy, especially of US imperialism. Unable to serve two masters at once, it is certain that he will end up being devoured from all sides, if he wins the elections, takes office and governs. From the sewers, the hosts of the extreme right, if they are defeated in the elections, will take advantage of the situation to escalate their actions and provocations to destabilise a weak government. In addition, the coup generals will be lying in wait like butchers, who, in the name of “threatened stability and legality”, will try to take advantage by imposing an escalation of militarisation of national political life that has not yet been achieved. This is the framework of the electoral farce for the chancellor.

In this explosive framework of a very deep general crisis of the moribund political system and its bureaucratic capitalism, there is no other way left for the masses of the people to seek better living conditions than by forcibly taking away their already trampled rights. It is now urgent that the working masses mobilise, putting pressure on their trade union leadership to prepare the call for and work seriously for a General Strike of National Resistance, which is coordinated and united with the agrarian revolution in the seizure of the land of the latifundia by the poor. Only in this way will it be possible to stop the voracity of this machine of grinding down the poor, struggling to save itself from the crisis of decomposition, and to advance the revolution of new democracy to uproot the obsolete system of exploitation and oppression.