HOW TO STRENGTHEN DEMOCRACY TO AVOID DICTATORSHIPS IN BRAZIL

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to present how to promote the strengthening of democracy to avoid the implantation 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 from extreme right-wing political forces. The failure of representative democracy as practiced in Brazil is contributing, not only to the aggravation of the country's economic and social problems, but also to the aggravation of political problems by opening the way to its own end, constituting fertile ground for the advent of regimes of exception in the face of the frustration of the majority of the Brazilian population who perceive every day that they participate in a deception by electing false representatives. This dissatisfaction with representative democracy is already manifest in each election in the growth of protests on social networks. All this explains the fact that there has been a great social mobilization in Brazil since 2013, which began with a wave of protests in S?o Paulo and spread to several Brazilian cities, mobilizing thousands of people to fight for the construction of a new political, economic and political order replacing the current political, economic and social order based on the 1988 Constitution. This is how neo-fascist extreme right political groups emerged that seek to purify Brazilian society with the establishment of a dictatorship to rid Brazil of the toxic influences of political parties and left-wing political leaders and their allies, which they blame for the situation in which the Brazilian nation lives.

Brazil is governed by the Constitution of the Federative Republic enacted on October 5, 1988. This document marked the end of the civil and military dictatorship and the emergence of democracy in Brazil that has lasted for 34 years. The redemocratization process in Brazil began with the fight for Amnesty in 1979. The constitutional text began to be written in a Constituent Assembly, in 1987, formed by 8 commissions and 24 thematic subcommittees. The 1988 Constitution established the Democratic State of Law. The 1988 Constitution establishes in its fundamental principles, in its Article 1, that the Federative Republic of Brazil, formed by the indissoluble union of States and Municipalities and the Federal District, constitutes a Democratic State of Law and is based on sovereignty, citizenship, human dignity, social values of work and free enterprise and political pluralism. In its sole paragraph, it states that all power emanates from the people, who exercise it through elected representatives or directly, under the terms of this Constitution. From Article 1, respect for the dignity of the Brazilian population and the social values of work have not yet been put into practice in Brazil because the vast majority of the Brazilian population is still marginalized in the face of gigantic unemployment and informal work in the country.

The 1988 Constitution establishes in its Article 2 that the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary are Powers of the Union, independent and harmonious among themselves. Currently, the Executive Power does not contribute to the harmony between the Powers of the Union. Article 3 informs that the fundamental objectives of the Federative Republic of Brazil are to build a free, fair and solidary society, guarantee national development, eradicate poverty and marginalization and reduce social and regional inequalities and promote the good of all, without prejudice of origin, race, sex, color, age and any other forms of discrimination. Article 3 has not yet been put into practice in Brazil. Article 4 establishes that the Federative Republic of Brazil is governed in its international relations by the following principles: I - national independence; II - prevalence of human rights; III - self-determination of peoples; IV - non-intervention; V - equality between States; VI - defense of peace; VII - peaceful resolution of conflicts; VIII - repudiation of terrorism and racism; IX - cooperation between peoples for the progress of humanity; and, X - granting of political asylum. In its Sole Paragraph, it establishes that the Federative Republic of Brazil will seek the economic, political, social and cultural integration of the peoples of Latin America, aiming at the formation of a Latin American community of nations. The Sole Paragraph of Article 4 has not been complied with in the current government.

With more than 70 Constitutional Amendments, the document has been modified over the 25 years following the changes in society. No matter how good the law is, it cannot be eternal. With the exception of the Stone Clauses, the rules need to keep up with the changes. Despite the possibility of being modified, the Constitutional Charter also contains paragraphs that cannot be changed, such as Article 5, which establishes that everyone is equal before the law, without distinction of any nature, guaranteeing Brazilians and foreigners residing in the Country the inviolability of the right to life, liberty, equality, security and property. Among the points present in the Stone Clauses, there is equality between men and women before the laws. However, Article 5 has not been complied with in practice because not all Brazilians are equal before the law and there is still no gender equality in Brazil. Since its enactment, Brazilian society has participated in the 1988 Constitution, a right provided for by law. For 34 years, popular involvement was seen in demonstrations and in the elaboration of norms. For example, the Clean Record Law enacted in 2010 was created at the initiative of Brazilian citizens. It aimed to prevent politicians investigated in the second degree of jurisdiction, in the Court of Justice, from being accepted to run for public office.

Despite not having been put into practice in its entirety, the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil has become the main symbol of the national redemocratization process, after more than two decades of civil and military dictatorship. It directly opposed the previous Constituent Assembly, of 1967, considered the most authoritarian of the Brazilian constitutions, which among its measures, established the suspension of the political rights of any citizen, the censorship of the press and the absolute power for the President of the Republic to close the National Congress. Thus, the 1988 Constitution sought to resume the path of democracy and the recovery of citizens' rights. The civil and military dictatorship left as its indelible mark the violation of civil rights. The 1988 Constituent Assembly operated, in fact, as a mobilizer and catalyst for the definition of guidelines in favor of human rights and meant the reconquest of citizenship and democracy. And the participation of the population was high because 15 million Brazilians signed more than 50 amendments to the basic text. It was the first time that popular amendments were allowed in a Brazilian constituent and that public hearings and consultations were held in the National Congress. In all, more than 80,000 popular amendments were proposed.

After the promulgation of the new Constitution in 1988, there was, therefore, a new political arrangement: the 1988 democratic pact. Supported at the same time by the new Constitution and by coalition presidentialism, a form of government based on the formation of great parliamentary coalitions, the democratic pact of 1988 is based on the understanding that the implementation of the social changes announced in the Constitution would occur gradually. From 1988 to the present, there have been democratic advances in Brazil as a true shock of progress. In 2011, for example, the National Truth Commission was created to investigate crimes committed by the Brazilian State during the civil and military dictatorship, and, in the same year, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) recognized the same-sex marriage. The following year, the same court recognized the right to abortion in cases of fetal anencephaly and confirmed the validity of the racial quota system in public universities. In 2013, the Domestic Workers' PEC was enacted, which expanded the labor rights of domestic workers, and in 2014 the "Spanking Law", which prohibits the use of physical punishment and cruel and degrading treatment of children and adolescents. Although these policies have represented undeniable democratic advances in Brazil, this did not automatically imply a reduction in oppressive relations in our society. The conquest of racial quotas occurred in parallel with the continuation of the murder of blacks, the creation of the Maria da Penha Law did not prevent the increase in femicides, the recognition of rights to indigenous and quilombola lands coexisted with intense persecution and violence directed at these groups, just as the right to civil union between people of the same sex continues to live with high rates of violence against the LGBTQIA+ community.

The word democracy, of Greek origin, means, by etymology, demos - people and kratein - to govern. It was the historian Herodotus who first used the term democracy in the 5th century BC. In ancient Greece there was direct democracy in which citizens themselves made political decisions in Greek city-states. The Greek model of democracy was called pure democracy, as it consisted of a society, with a small number of citizens, which met and directly administered the government. 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 government of the people and of all of us, because the people are really the ones who should govern the government, although they do it indirectly through representatives chosen through the vote. 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, the holding of elections is not enough to characterize democracy.

Democracy is not, therefore, limited to the election of representatives of the people. It is necessary that the rulers, after being elected, always act in accordance with the aspirations and interests of the people who elected them. During their term of office, those elected should always act in accordance with public opinion. There can be no democracy in opposition to public opinion. When there is no such consonance, the people do not govern, although they elect their rulers. 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 start to defend the interests of economic groups against the interests of those who elected them. What is promised in an electoral campaign is, with rare exceptions, abandoned by executive power leaders and parliamentarians after occupying their elective positions. From this moment on, the interests of the elected officials themselves and the funders of their electoral campaigns, which do not always correspond to the interests of the vast majority of voters, prevail.

In practice, everything works as in each election the people offered each leader of the Executive Power and each parliamentarian a blank check to do whatever they want after occupying their elected positions. What can be seen, in fact, is the existence in the Executive Power and in Parliament of a group of elected officials without social control and increasingly distant from the demands of citizens. All this explains why several clauses expressed in the 1988 Constitution have not been complied with. The absence of social control of those elected and their lack of commitment to the Constitution and campaign promises only tend to reinforce the idea of the inexistence of substantial differences between the political parties in which many of them have become mere electoral registers and to increase frustration with the 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 plebiscite 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 become a part, feel included and exercise their right to citizenship (having a turn, a voice and a vote). Citizen participation cannot be understood as a gift or concession, but as a right.

The political institutions existing in Brazil since 1988 are a democratic achievement of the Brazilian people in the face of the darkness of the civil and 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, meeting the exclusive will of government officials and economic groups, as is the case in representative democracy currently practiced in Brazil. The failure of representative democracy was one of the factors that contributed to the extreme right-wing political sectors starting to deny democracy, fighting for the implantation of a dictatorship as a solution to obtain better days, without corruption in all spheres of government, without elitist justice that decides for its own benefit (as we saw recently with the decision of the STF to increase the salaries of its ministers) and without a Parliament that protects hidden interests through secret budgetings and laws that guarantee the interests of those above and punish those below. The realization that neo-fascist extreme right groups threaten democracy currently forces all democrats in Brazil to join efforts to prevent the ongoing coup d'état attempt and fight for a proposal for a democratic system radically different from the current one that we are forced to defend to prevent political-institutional setbacks. For democracy in Brazil to be strengthened, it is therefore necessary to institutionalize participatory democracy in our Constitution as a sine-qua-non condition to stop the attempts of neo-fascist extreme right political groups to destroy the democratic achievements achieved with the 1988 Constitution and implant a dictatorship in the country in the present and in the future.

* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and of IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, university professor 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 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) and A humanidade amea?ada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, S?o Paulo, 2021) .