HOW TO PREVENT NEW COUP D′ETAT ATTEMPTS FROM BEING REPEATED IN BRAZIL

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to present how to promote the strengthening of democracy to prevent new coup d'etat attempts and the establishment of dictatorships in Brazil in the present and in the future. Democracy needs to be strengthened in Brazil in the face of concrete threats to its existence, such as the events that broke out on January 8, 2023 with the attempted coup d'état promoted by far-right political forces and sectors of Brazilian society dissatisfied with the victory of Lula in the presidential elections. The attempted coup d'état on January 8, 2023 was the result of the failure of representative democracy as practiced in Brazil, which elects rulers and parliamentarians at its various levels who have not achieved the objectives expressed in the 1988 Constitution, contributing to aggravating the gigantic problems economic and social aspects of Brazilian society.

The 1988 Constitution establishes in its fundamental principles, in its Article 1, respect for the dignity of the Brazilian population and the social values of work that were not put into practice by governments and parliamentarians at their various levels in Brazil because the vast majority of the Brazilian population continues to be marginalized due to the gigantic level of unemployment and informal work in the country, as well as the existence of a large number of populations unassisted due to the insufficiency of public education, public health, basic sanitation, housing and quality public transport services. The 1988 Constitution establishes in its Article 3 that the fundamental objectives of the Federative Republic of Brazil are to build a free, fair and supportive society, guarantee national development, eradicate poverty and marginalization and reduce social and regional inequalities and promote the good of everyone, without prejudice based on origin, race, sex, color, age or any other form of discrimination. Article 3 has not yet been fully put into practice in Brazil by its governments and parliamentarians at its various levels.

The 1988 Constitution establishes in Article 5 that everyone is equal before the law, without distinction of any kind, guaranteeing Brazilians and foreigners residing in the country the inviolability of the right to life, liberty, equality, security and the property. Among the points present in the Petreas Clauses is the equality between men and women before the laws. However, neither Article 5 nor one of the Petreas Clauses has been complied with in practice because not all Brazilians are equal before the law and there is still no gender equality in Brazil. Despite not having been put into practice in its entirety, the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil became the main symbol of the national redemocratization process, after more than two decades of military dictatorship. It was directly opposed to the previous Constituent, from 1967, considered the most authoritarian of Brazilian constitutions, which among its measures, established the suspension of the political rights of any citizen, censorship of the press and the absolute power for the President of the Republic to close National Congress.

It is worth noting that the word democracy, of Greek origin, means, by etymology, demos - people and kratein - to govern. It was the Greek historian Herodotus who used the term democracy for the first time in the 5th century BC. In ancient Greece there was direct democracy in which the citizens themselves made political decisions in the Greek city-states. The Greek model of democracy was called pure democracy, as it consisted of a society, with a small number of citizens, who met and administered the government directly. Due to the complexity of modern society, another form of political organization has become a requirement, that of indirect democracy, also called representative democracy, which means that people are elected, by vote, to "represent" a people, a population, a certain group , community etc. Democracy can only be a government of the people and of all of us, as the people are really the ones who should govern the government, although they do so indirectly through representatives chosen through voting. This is the essence of representative democracy. The first condition for democracy to exist is popular election, the choice of rulers and their representatives by the people. However, holding an election is not enough to characterize democracy.

Democracy does not end, therefore, in the election of the people's representatives. Once elected, government officials must respect the Constitution and always act in accordance with the aspirations and interests of the people who elected them. During their mandates, elected officials should always act in line with public opinion. There can be no democracy in opposition to public opinion. When there is no consonance, the people do not govern, although they elect their rulers, as is the case in Brazil. Representative democracy in Brazil shows clear signs of exhaustion by discouraging popular participation, reducing political activity to electoral processes that are periodically repeated in which the people elect their representatives who, with few exceptions, after the elections begin to defend the interests of groups economic interests in opposition to the interests of those who elected them, as is the case in Brazil. What is promised in an electoral campaign is, with rare exceptions, abandoned by the majority of executive branch leaders and by parliamentarians after occupying their elected positions. From this moment on, the interests of the elected officials themselves and the financiers of their electoral campaigns come to prevail, which do not always correspond to the interests of the vast majority of voters in Brazil.

In practice, everything works as in every election in Brazil, the people offer each executive branch leader and each parliamentarian a blank check to do whatever they want after occupying their elected positions. What is evident, in fact, is the existence in the Executive Branch and in Parliament of a group of elected officials without social control and increasingly distant from citizens' demands. All of this explains why several clauses expressed in the 1988 Constitution have not been complied with by government officials and parliamentarians at their various levels in Brazil. The lack of social control of elected officials and their lack of commitment to the 1988 Constitution and campaign promises only tend to reinforce the idea of the non-existence of substantial differences between political parties in which many of them have become mere electoral organizations? and increase frustration with representative democracy and political institutions in Brazil.

To advance democracy in Brazil and improve representative democracy, it is essential to institutionalize participatory democracy with the people ultimately deliberating on government plans and budgets at all levels (federal, state and municipal) through plebiscites and referendum, as is already the case in several European countries, particularly in Scandinavia, currently considered the ideal model for the exercise of political power based on public debate between rulers and free citizens under equal conditions of participation. Participatory democracy means citizens taking part, feeling included and exercising their right to citizenship (having a say, a voice and a vote). Citizen participation cannot be understood as a gift or concession, but rather as a right.

The political institutions that have existed in Brazil since 1988 are a democratic achievement of the Brazilian people in the face of the darkness of the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985, but in no way are they an expression of a true democracy that can only be achieved with participatory democracy. Participatory democracy would be the way to prevent government plans and budgets from being imposed on the population according to the exclusive will of rulers and economic groups, as occurs in the representative democracy currently practiced in Brazil. The failure of representative democracy in Brazil was one of the factors that contributed to far-right political sectors starting to deny democracy, fighting for the implementation of a dictatorship as a solution to obtain better days, without corruption in all spheres of government, without an elitist justice that decides for its own benefit and without a parliament that protects vested interests through secret budgets and laws that guarantee the interests of those above and punish those below.

The realization that far-right groups and dissatisfied sectors of society could once again threaten democracy currently obliges all democrats in Brazil to join forces to prevent new coup attempts by strengthening democracy. To achieve this objective, it is necessary that the democratic forces in Brazil commit themselves to ensuring that participatory democracy is included in our Constitution, given that this is the sine-qua-non condition to stop the attempts of neo-fascist extreme right-wing political groups to destroy the achievements democratic achievements achieved with the 1988 Constitution and implement a dictatorship in the country in the present and future.

* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and? IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia, engineer from the UFBA Polytechnic School and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, college professor (Engineering, Economy and Administration) and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, is the author of the books Globaliza??o (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,https://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globaliza??o e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporanea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, S?o Paulo, 2010), Amaz?nia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, S?o Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econ?mico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudan?a Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revolu??es Científicas, Econ?micas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Inven??o de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017),? Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associa??o Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019), A humanidade amea?ada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, S?o Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribui??o ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022), a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press,? Boca Raton, Florida United States, 2022), How to protect human beings from threats to their existence and avoid the extinction of humanity (Generis Publishing, Europe, Republic of Moldova, Chi?in?u, 2023) and A revolu??o da educa??o necessária ao Brasil na era contemporanea (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2023).?