Democracies, Blow by Blow

: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel / Source Página12 /

The democratic government of Brazil was overthrown by the palace intrigue of deputies and senators, with judicial and corporate complicity. The Parliament criminalized a public and legal mechanism of government that other administrations have also used and, without having proof of a crime —as the Constitution demands—, removed Dilma Rousseff.

The “Soft Coup” methodology that was applied had already been experimented in Honduras and Paraguay —a serious warning to current and future governments of the continent that are intending to widen sovereignty margins and increase wealth distribution among the peoples.

In my recent trip to Brazil, I was able to do what many international organisms couldn’t: I met with the President, with senators from the opposition and from the government’s party, with the President of the Federal Supreme Court, the Secretary General of the National Conference of Bishops and with social movements. I published the details in the journal Folha, from Sao Paulo. This gave me a wider outlook on what’s going on there and allowed me to learn that there are sectors that have no intentions of solving the current economic and political crisis, instead, they want to surf it in order to become leaders, without permission from anybody but themselves.

After the removal of the President, the General Secretary of UNASUR said that “this jeopardizes the democratic stability in the region”; the OAS secretary pointed out that this generates “legal insecurity” and placed a complaint to the International Court of Human Rights; El Salvador didn’t recognize the interim government and removed their ambassador; the ALBA alliance, formed by Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia, stated that this is a “coup” and Chile and Uruguay showed their concern.  

The first government to recognize the coup and called to “respect the institutional process” was Mauricio Macri’s administration from Argentina. This is consistent with the request of Barack Obama’s government of “trusting the Brazilian institutions”.

The aim is to domesticate and re-colonize Latin America. What the right can’t achieve through the polls, they seek to accomplish through the illegal destitution of presidents, the privatization of State companies and the rendition of natural resources.

I don’t believe in coincidences. According to Wikileaks documents, the current President, Michel Temer, was a collaborator of the North American intelligence handing in documents that were sensitive to the embassy. And the current US Ambassador in Brazil is the same one that was in Paraguay when the coup against Fernando Lugo took place.

On his part, Temer has already announced his upcoming economic measures, which were not voted by the Brazilian people: a tax increase, “ the privatization of all that can be privatized”, and reducing public and social expenses. To his end, he put together a cabinet that confirms all of his priorities: there are no women, no indigenous people, no “mulatos”. They are all white, rich men. One of them is the greatest soy seller in the world, who was appointed as Minister of Agriculture. Many other officials are involved in serious corruption cases, but now they say they want to “fight against corruption”.

No democracy nor elected government is perfect. But we can’t allow that groups of conspirators violate the Constitution in the name of its defense. All democracies can be perfectible if they are backed by social participation. Today, “delegating” democracies are being questioned: democracies in which people vote and then remain passive and vulnerable for four years, while rulers do as they like, and not as they should. The current challenge is to move forward to forms of “participative” democracy, where the great problems affecting the country can be decided by society as a whole, and not by the great internal and foreign groups of economic power. We, the people of Our America, can only count on social, cultural, political resistance to defend the rights of all people, and our democracies.

http://www.thedawn-news.org/2016/05/18/democracies-blow-by-blow/