It is a democratic victory that Lula has restored his political rights. In a country where a criminal holds the office of President of the Republic and countless politicians involved in corruption schemes run the corrupt political powers, Lula’s convictions were merely a political decision to no longer accept his participation of any kind in the power condominium of the bourgeois state. Knowing, moreover, that Lula had a chance to win in 2018, Moro and the STF decided to prevent him from running.
Now Lula can have a free field to act. This is a fundamental condition for testing the capacity of all opposition sectors to organize the confrontation against the Bolsonarist tragedy.
When Lula was released, this testing field began. We know that, despite this, the political and parliamentary opposition was not capable of strong action that would shift the balance of power against the government. When this occurred it was at the hands of the social opposition, be it the student movement in 2019, with the May mobilizations, or in 2020, with the anti-fascist acts in April. All without the noteworthy participation of the parties of the traditional left.
The bourgeois division was another brake to the Bolsonarist project of changing the political regime and imposing authoritarianism as the dominant aspect of the national situation. The bourgeoisie, however, as we know, at the end of the day, has been complicit in Bolsonarism. Its divisions are important, but the determining factor is the people’s capacity to build their own, independent path. What line will Lula adopt? What price will the bourgeoisie and its judiciary demand? Will they demand from Lula a new letter to the Brazilian people, which was his passport to make an agreement with the ruling class that accepted him in power from then on? We will have a lot of movement in the coming months.
The challenge now is to call for social mobilization, with pot-banging protests, rallies, and to take to the streets as soon as sanitary conditions permit, or even in spite of them, if it is unavoidable, as happened in our neighbor Paraguay.
On the electoral terrain, the debate about the need for unity against Bolsonaro continues. But, in the framework of the division between PT, PDT, PSB, PC do B, PSOL, etc., and names in dispute, such as Ciro and Haddad, among others, how will Lula present his card? As the natural candidate? We who defend a workers’ project in opposition to the continuity of Bolsonaro and bourgeois anti-liberalism, affirm that nothing should seem natural.
With Lula in the picture, the program debate gains even more weight in the face of the experience of his own government. The left and center-left opposition front against Bolsonaro is a challenge. For us, a front with this character can and should be formed. It is clear that with Lula as a postulant, with his name carrying a living program, on our part we will affirm even more a logic of class independence. This is the very reason for the PSOL to exist. The PT will have to say what its real conclusions are from its 13 years of social-liberal government with compensatory social measures. The PSOL will know how to vote to defeat Bolsonaro. At the same time, the PSOL will know how to choose tactics to defend its historical banners and its anti-capitalist project.
These are the themes for the debates that will accompany us in the coming months.
