POLITICAL BLINDNESS DOMINATES BRAZIL

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to demonstrate that the political blindness that dominates Brazil in recent times is paving the way for the possibility of political and institutional setback of harmful consequences for the future of democracy with the escalation of fascism in the country. Before addressing the political blindness that dominates the country Brazil, it is opportune to make an analogy of the country's situation with that exposed by the Portuguese writer José Saramago in his novel Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Essay on blindness) that presents us with a terrifying image of the dark times in which we live in the world (SARAMAGO, José. Ensaio sobre a cegueira. S?o Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2020). The novel begins by showing a driver stopped waiting for the traffic lights to open when he suddenly finds himself blind and people rush to his rescue until a successive chain of blindness forms, that is, a blindness white, like a sea of milk never known that spreads rapidly in the form of an epidemic. The government decides to act, and infected people are placed in a quarantine with limited resources when they will gradually reveal the primitive characteristics of the human being.

The strength of the blindness epidemic does not diminish with the actions taken by the government and soon the world becomes blind, where only one woman, mysteriously and secretly will maintain her vision, facing all the horrors that will be caused, visually witnessing all the feelings that are they unfold in the Saramago′s work: power, obedience, greed, affection, desire, shame, dominators, dominated, subjugators and subjugated. In this quarantine, these feelings will develop in different forms: struggles between groups for the little food available, compassion for the sick and the most needy, such as the elderly or children, embarrassment by attitudes that would never have been committed before, acts of violence and sexual abuse, deaths.

When she finally managed to get out of the old asylum where the government quarantined her, a woman is faced with the entire city infected with corpses, garbage, debris, all kinds of dirt and filth. The blind began to follow their animal instincts, and survived like nomads, settling in unknown stores or houses. Saramago shows, through this work, the human being's reactions to needs, incapacity, impotence, contempt and abandonment. It also leads us to reflect on morals, customs, ethics and prejudice through the eyes of the main character, the doctor's wife, who faces inadmissible situations throughout the narrative. She kills to preserve herself and the others, she faces death in bizarre ways, like corpses scattered on the streets and fires. In Saramago's work everything ends when suddenly, exactly in the order of contagion, the blind world gives way to the filthy and barbaric world. However, the memories and traces do not fade.

An analogy can be drawn between the scenario portrayed by Saramago in his work and the political blindness in which we live in Brazil. Today in Brazil we live the blindness (the blind world of Saramago) of a good part of the Brazilian population and the government that can give rise to the institutional political setback (the dirty and barbaric world of Saramago) that would result from the aggravation of the economic, social and political crises deepened by the new Coronavirus pandemic. A good part of the Brazilian population was dominated by blindness when they elected Jair Bolsonaro president of the Republic in the last presidential elections driven by hatred for ex-president Lula and PT (Worker Party), which he considered responsible for the corruption that became endemic and for the serious economic crisis that came to exist as of 2014 in Brazil, as well as, mistakenly, it also sought to prevent communists from assuming power as if this threat existed. Bolsonaro's voters, driven by blindness, only elected him because they concluded that he was the only candidate capable of preventing the return of Lulopetism to power and, mistakenly, believed that fighting corruption would solve Brazil's economic problems.

The political blindness of Bolsonaro's voters also lies in the fact that they elect a President of the Republic who, in addition to not having a development plan or project for Brazil, presented a typically fascist government proposal because his campaign speech was based on in the explicit cult of order, in state violence, in authoritarian government practices, in social contempt for vulnerable and fragile groups and in anti-communism.

Political blindness dominates about 30% of the Brazilian population, which has been proven through public opinion polls, demonstrating that this segment is satisfied with the Bolsonaro government despite he is doing nothing to solve the problems of the Brazilian economy, poverty and unemployment en masse that register in Brazil. This political blindness of Bolsonaro's supporters remains despite its absurd position contrary to the measures of social distance to combat the new Coronavirus, systematically disrespecting all restrictive measures to the agglomeration of people adopted by governors and mayors under the false pretext that it is necessary to save, also, the Brazilian economy of debacle collaborating, in this way, for the collective murder of the Brazilian people by the virus that has already reached more than 100 thousand dead. To complete his disservice to the nation, Bolsonaro promised to veto, if approved, a bill presented in the National Congress that provides for prison terms for those who fail to comply with Covid-19 containment measures that include vaccination, wearing masks and carrying out compulsory laboratory exams and tests.

Political blindness also affects the National Congress, the Judiciary (Supreme Federal Court, Superior Court of Justice and the Attorney General's Office) that do not act with the adoption of measures provided for in the Constitution of Brazil aiming to interdict the presence of Bolsonaro in presidency of the Republic in view of his purpose of implanting a dictatorship in the Country as was demonstrated by his support for the various manifestations of the fascist horde that claimed to want the closure of the Supreme Federal Court and the National Congress and in his pronouncements against the Constitution of the Republic who he swore respect in their act of possession. It is quite clear that the objective of the Bolsonaro government is to gain full power to put into practice its fascist government project. The escalation of fascism is already a concrete fact in Brazil, widespread, ingrained and may become irreversible at the present moment if there is no resistance.

Political blindness also affects the president of the Chamber of Deputies who does nothing to open impeachment proceedings against Bolsonaro, the Attorney General's Office who has the role of supervising the performance of the three branches (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) and does not denounce the anti-democratic acts practiced by Bolsonaro and his government, the Federal Supreme Court and the Superior Court of Justice, which should ensure respect for the Constitution and the laws of the country, do little or nothing to stop Bolsonaro's purposes of implanting a dictatorship in Brazil. The blindness of the National Congress, the Supreme Federal Court, the Superior Court of Justice and the Attorney General's Office is also evidenced by the fact that they do nothing to stop the actions of Bolsonaro and his government that threaten the environment and indigenous populations that inhabit the Amazon by encouraging burning in the Amazon rainforest and the action of miners and loggers in the region in flagrant disregard for the Constitution. The result of the Bolsonaro government's action in relation to the environment is the horror of the environmental catastrophe characterized by the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the genocide of the indigenous populations that live there.

From what has just been said, it can be concluded that the democratic system in force in Brazil is threatened. Political events in Brazil confirm the thesis of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt presented in their work “How Democracies Die” that “the death of post-Cold War democracies occurs predominantly at the hands of elected leaders, not through the classic coups d'état. Democratic regression today begins at the polls ”. According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, today, the situation is occurring in various parts of the world in which leaders described as outsiders who, although they may remain marginal forever, gain relevance if they find some support in establishment political parties. In this case, instead of guardians of democracy, political parties end up contributing to the legitimation of a potential dictator who, by assuming power, rejects democratic rules, denies the legitimacy of political opponents, tolerates and encourages violence and has a tendency to restrict opponents' civil liberties, including the media (LEVITSKY, Steven and ZIBLATT, Daniel. How Democracies Die. New York: Broadway Books, 2019). This is the case with Bolsonaro.

Levistky and Ziblatt suggest the strategy of a broad democratic front to prevent the demise of democracies. This strategy is absolutely necessary in contemporary Brazil to avoid the end of the democratic system. The formation of a broad, democratic and anti-fascist front in Parliament and in Civil Society is urgently needed to defend the 1988 Constitution and fight against government acts that are contrary to the interests of the vast majority of the population and Brazil. This broad front must not only aim at defending democracy and the interests of the majority of the population, but also defending national interests threatened by the Bolsonaro government's purpose of privatizing Petrobras, Eletrobras and Banco do Brasil, among other state-owned companies, which means delivering this valuable national heritage to foreign capital.

* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, 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, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).