June 15, 2022

13:06

Ívina Garcia – from Amazon Agency

MANAUS – For a group of more than a thousand economists and supporters of the candidacy of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), the government policies adopted by Bolsonaro since 2018 are “sinking” Brazil in an economic stagnation “unprecedented in history”, which shows the “undeniable regression” economic of the country.

In response, the group of economists drafted and endorsed the manifesto “Movement of Economists for Democracy and Against Barbarism”, which the group’s position regarding the upcoming elections and the measures needed to recover sustainable growth with reduced inequality.

For the economists collective, the relationship between poverty and the increase in the cost of living in Brazil expose the poverty situation in which the country currently finds itself. According to the number of those registered with CadÚnico, for social income distribution programs, there are 14 million families in extreme poverty, the highest number since 2014.

The neglect of the federal government, especially in ensuring the survival and food security of the most vulnerable people, is mainly present in the discourse that attributes to the closure of companies at the most critical time of the Covid-19 pandemic. President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and economy minister Paulo Guedes defend to this day a supposed theory of “herd immunity” and that trade should not have closed.

It is worth remembering that Brazil lost more than 600,000 people to the pandemic, and the number could have been even worse had it not been for the autonomy of the states and municipalities in surveillance and health control, which helped contain the advance of the virus.

“Health care was severely weakened, in one of the moments when we need the sector the most in our history. As a result, we had more than 10% of the world’s deaths, representing 2.7% of the planet’s population. The damage to the future of the country is immeasurable”, evaluate the economists.

In the document, signed by economists from all regions of Brazil and that will be delivered to Lula’s Coalition ‘Let’s Go Together Brazil’ on Wednesday, 15, in a public act, they assess that the current government has implemented a self-destructive project that has deepened the social inequalities already evident in Brazilian society.

“Bolsonaro (…) privileged even more rent-seeking and large financial interests and led us to the gates of barbarism,” says the text, which points to the weakening of institutions, especially those that have been privatized or dismantled by the exchange of powers and reduction of personnel, such as Funai and Petrobras.

The document also exposes the attempt to enable a coup by the president, who even winning the election in a democratic way in 2018, has made numerous attacks on the ballot box and the Brazilian electoral system, recognized as one of the safest in the world.

Bolsonaro has tried to intimidate the Supreme Court (STF), and has already made it clear that he will question the 2022 elections. “With the intention of denying Brazilians the right to elect their representatives, while he persistently tries to violate the freedom of expression of those contrary to his project”, the economists opine in the document.

The president’s attacks on freedom of speech and the press are commonplace. A recent survey by the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (ABERT), points to a 22% increase in the number of attacks, assaults, threats, and intimidation against journalists and the press in general in 2021. Among the general number, 46 attacks came directly from the president, being him the main author of the occurrences.

The feeling of insecurity was heightened with the disappearance of Bruno Pereira, a Funai indigenist, and Dom Phillips, a journalist, while on an expedition through the Amazon, in the region between the São Rafael community and the municipality of Atalaia do Norte, on the last 5th. The federal government showed omission by not expediting the search, Bolsonaro even called it an “adventure” and made clear the absence of power in the most distant places of Brazil, delivered to barbarism and drug trafficking.

Read more: Disappearances of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira intimidate journalism and activism in the Amazon, points UFPR

According to the manifesto, Bolsonaro’s constant accusations and attacks generate political instability and negatively affect the country’s image, causing unease with the international community, directly affecting business relations with multinational companies.

“Public investments have been halted, reduced to their lowest value. Public policies for education, science and technology, environmental preservation, and human rights were abandoned. Income transfer programs were used for electoral purposes and weakened, not reaching all the people who need them”, they point out.

According to the economists, for the first time in 25 years, Bolsonaro will deliver at the end of his mandate in 2022, a lower minimum wage, in comparison to purchasing power, than the one the population received during his inauguration in January 2018.

“Bolsonaro’s policy aims to deregulate economic activities, give autonomy to private companies, many of them oligopolies, to self-regulate and get rid of socio-environmental protection laws,” they state.

It is during the Bolsonaro government that Brazil began to register extremely high rates of forest devastation at the expense of the advance of illegal miners in Indigenous Lands that are guarded by law, but that in practice are encouraged to invade and exploit the resources.

“The expansion front of Brazilian dependent capitalism now revolves around agribusiness, especially the grain and meat complex, stimulated by international dynamics, mineral extractivism with all that is inherent to it: environmental devastation (including by the intensive use of pesticides), social and cultural, with a permanent conflict around the occupation and use of land,” they point out.

Bolsonaro abroad

In international politics, Bolsonaro is known for renouncing national sovereignty. Just this week, he was at the Summit of the Americas, where he met with Biden, asked for collaboration for the 2022 elections and said he works to defend US interests. On other occasions, Jair has committed a crime against the State, considered a betrayal of the country’s sovereignty.

They evaluate that Bolsonaro’s political project is to implement “An authoritarian political system, a neo-fascist dictatorship that intends to perpetuate itself by arming the police and militias to achieve its aspiration for power”.

“We economists, who subscribe to this manifesto, understand that overcoming this situation requires a union in defense of democracy, human rights, and the 1988 Constitution. A pact in defense of civilization and against barbarism, multi-party, the broadest possible, as expressed in the party front that launched the Lula/Alckmin pre-candidacy”, they state.

The manifesto also points out ways for the next government to recover Brazil and make the country less unequal, as follows in the list below:

• Promotion of a Political Reform based on the principles of strengthening political parties and increasing popular participation through plebiscites, referenda, and deliberative sectorial councils;
• Extinction of the spending cap and creation of a new fiscal rule that makes the medium and long term sustainability of public debt compatible, essential to manage the financial fragility of the Brazilian State, with the necessary increase in spending on education, health, social assistance, culture, and policies to support blacks, traditional peoples, women, people with special needs, youth, and LGBTQIA+;
• Reactivation of the public policy councils that were abolished in the Bolsonaro Administration. In particular, the resumption of the full operation of Consea and of the national instruments to combat hunger and poverty, the policies of regulatory stocks and minimum prices, and strong support for family farming;
• Promotion of a profound change in economic, social, and environmental policies whose orthodox, neocolonial, and neofacist character deepens tendencies toward economic stagnation and exacerbates multiple inequalities – of income and wealth, regional, race/ethnicity, and gender in the labor market
• Promote rapidly a Broad and Structural Tax Reform that aims to: (i) strongly increase the progressiveness of the tax burden by taxing distributed profits and dividends, reviewing the “pejotização” and increasing property taxes, and reducing the tax burden on consumption by the poorest; (ii) establish horizontal equity among sectors of economic activity by reducing the tax burden on manufacturing industry and increasing the tax burden on agribusiness and the service sector;
• Modernization, restructuring, and democratization of the State, placing at the center of its agenda the objectives of guaranteeing life, well-living, and sustainability with a long-term vision;
• Designing and implementing emergency programs of public works in infrastructure and public services in partnership with states and municipalities, aiming to generate work and income and stimulate local economies;
• Building a solid program of investments in economic, urban and social infrastructure, with emphasis on initiatives that reduce social and regional inequalities;
• Strengthening the BNDES and the public banks as project financiers for the technological revival and modernization of industry, lagging behind internationally due to lack of investment. This financing must be linked to concrete goals for improving competitiveness in international markets and to social and environmental sustainability goals, including the reduction of CO2 emissions. It is necessary that the monetary authorities regain the capacity to, if necessary, use their rates to favor investment and counter-cyclical efforts, in addition to favoring sectors and activities that are intensive in benefits for the entire economy. It is also important to prioritize support for small businesses and for medium, small, and micro enterprises;
• Strengthening the national public service, respecting and valuing the rights of civil servants, seeking to undo privileges accumulated in the last period, especially in the Judiciary and in the Armed Forces, as well as recovering the inductive and planning capacity of the Brazilian State;
• Modernization of the models for implementing public policies, updating them in face of the challenges and opportunities associated with the new technical standards of the knowledge era and advances in the process of rebuilding the State.
• Taking immediate measures to combat hunger and food and nutritional insecurity;
• Resumption of the policy of increasing the value of the minimum wage;
• Revision of the Labor and Social Security Reforms based on negotiation between workers, businessmen, and government;
• Technical support and financing for family agriculture, implementation of an agro-ecological agrarian reform, establishment of regulating stocks and commercialization of products aimed at reducing famine, guaranteeing food security and improving the income of small rural producers;
• Incentive to solidarity economy, associativism, cooperativism, local productive arrangements, and urban and rural territorial development projects;
• Guarantee of access to human rights, to work, and to a decent life. Fighting racism, sexism, and patriarchy, creating affirmative measures and institutional mechanisms so that discriminated people and groups can overcome poverty and have access to decent work and existence;
• Revision of the international fuel price parity policy through the resumption of national production of oil derivatives, strengthening Petrobras as an energy company that induces national growth and development;
• Resuming state control of Eletrobras and prioritizing the expansion of renewable energy, keeping the public sector in control of the country’s energy matrix;
• Development of an environmental policy committed to sociobiodiversity, the defense of the environment, and the solution of climate issues, guaranteeing the constitutionally defined rights of native peoples and the recognition of their knowledge, adhering to measures to protect the natural wealth of the country. Presentation of a fair transition plan for a green economy, based on biotechnology, industry 4.0, and the Internet of Things, promoting changes in the current pattern of urban mobility, and seeking the recovery of degraded areas and the industrial health complex;
• Strong increase in investment in science, technology, and innovation, aiming at the levels observed in developed countries;
• Guarantee of a strategic look at regional development, especially for the Amazon and the Northeast, with a character of inclusion and reduction of inequalities, but also of integration within a national development project, based on the regional potentials themselves. It is also fundamental
• also to resume negotiations with the States and Municipalities, with respect to public debt, seeking to make the financial situation of the subnational levels fairer and more sustainable;
• Resuming and strengthening regional integration through the Mercosul and the expansion of the process in South America and the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean;
• Revision of foreign policy in order to recover the country’s protagonism in international organizations and forums and in southern cooperation, especially with the countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia, as well as rescuing and strengthening the ties with the Brics.

Read the full manifesto: