Shooting Lula

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Image: Nueva Sociedad. All rights reserved.

As expected, the
Supreme Federal Court of Brazil rejected the writ of habeas corpus presented by
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s lawyers after he had been sentenced by two different
courts of justice to 9 years first, and then to 12 years.

The offense attributed to him is that of having improperly received a three-floor
apartment on the beach from the Brazilian construction company OAS in exchange
for certain advantages while in government. Five judges were for and five
against Lula’s appeal, so it was for the president of the court to break the
tie and she sided against Lula.

Five judges were for and five against Lula’s appeal, so it was for the president of the court to break the tie and she sided against Lula.

The debates were
broadcast live on TV – a peculiarity of the Brazilian court system – for hours
on end, during which several types of arguments – legal, historical and
political – were put forward and the decision to maintain the 2006
jurisprudence prevailed.

The public character
of the hearings obliged the judges to argue in
favor and against Lula’s appeal. Presumption of innocence and impunity were the
two poles between which they had to decide whether Lula should go to prison any
time soon or later on.

However, as reflected in the judges’
interventions, the decision had to be taken in a tense environment, beleaguered
by pressures, and in the context of a dangerous shift in Brazilian politics
towards public and shameless
interference by the military.

Hardly veiling his intentions, the Army Chief of Staff, General Eduardo
Villas Bôas, said on Twitter that the institution "repudiates impunity and
respects the Constitution, social peace and democracy" – a clearly
intimidating message. "We are with you in the trenches! We think alike!
Brazil above all!", added enthusiastically General Antonio Miotto. Another
high-ranking officer mentioned swords and horses prepared for combat.

With Lula leading
all the polls with a 37% voting intention, the former president's trial has
long been perceived by his followers as a well-aimed shot to get him out of the
race.

What is more: as a revenge from the elites against the worker-president, a
child from the poor Northeast who later became a pugnacious trade-unionist in
the ABC Region of São Paulo, who took millions of his countrymen out of poverty
and opened a way for them to material and symbolic social advancement.

So, the image
of Lula arrested under the dictatorship has become a piece of evidence of his
continuing and permanent persecution. And in Latin America as a whole most of
the Left inscribes this judicial process inside the broader struggle between
the people and the oligarchy.

In Latin America as a whole most of the Left inscribes this judicial process inside the broader struggle between the people and the oligarchy.

In fact, it is hard to sustain
this at face value. From the Planalto Palace in
Brasilia, Lula and the Workers' Party (PT) established often unclear relationships
with the Brazilian business community, and their policies contributed to the
expansion of several trans-Latin corporations, such as the now famous
Odebrecht, and the JBS meatpacking giant.

The PT got also entangled in
agreements with the old politics, which it was unable to reform. Lula's current
legal situation cannot obscure the story of all these years – a hyper-pragmatic
PT’s "neo-developmentalist" efforts and its links with the Brazilian
bourgeoisie – and this is why it is not so easy to establish a connection
between Lula today and the worker leader he used to be, much in the same way as
Dilma Rousseff who, in the midst of her impeachment process, was no longer the
post-leftist technocrat who had handed over the Ministry of Economy to
neoliberals, but the thick-glassed guerrilla of the old days, who appeared on the
dictatorship’s police files.

Even though this
current Lula, reconstructed by himself and the Left, is unrealistic, and even
though the PT has been involved in several corruption scandals, it is nevertheless
a fact that anti-Lulism is the vector for the powerful un-egalitarian and
reactionary forces which have marked the history of Brazil and are extremely active
in the present.

It is significant that the very moderate PT experience is today
being described as "Communist" and labeled a "trade union
dictatorship" in a markedly anti-plebeian context which bears the stamp of a
substantial part of the Brazilian elites’ traditional racism and classism. In
truth, the Lava Jato scandal has brought down several once-powerful figures,
such as Eduardo Cunha himself – who masterminded the parliamentary coup against
Rousseff – and business leader Marcelo Odebrecht, and this cannot be attributed
to the anti-PT war. But it is no less true that class revenge is latent in the
imaginaries created around the fight against Lulism as a political and social
phenomenon.

The Brazilian
case shows that the fight against corruption can coexist with strong democratic
and institutional deterioration.

The murder of councilor Marielle Franco; blatant corruption – involving
from President Michel Temer to most current MPs and governors and officials at
all levels -; the expansion of the freedom to publicly defend the military
dictatorship; and denunciation being turned into a bazaar where information is traded
for benefits in judicial sentences in opaque ways: all of these are signals
warning of the de-democratization of the country.

The candidate currently in second
position in the polls for the October elections, Jair Bolsonaro, is a clear
expression of this degradation. A former Army officer with an anti-corruption
and anti-elite discourse, Bolsonaro is the mouthpiece of
the far Right and his rhetoric is permanently spiced with homophobic, racist and
misogynist outbursts.

Jair Bolsonaro, second in the polls for the October elections, has famously declared that the dictatorship’s error was torturing instead of killing, and that he would rather have a gay son of his killed in a accident than seeing him with another man. 

He has famously declared that the dictatorship’s error
was torturing instead of killing off its opponents, and that he would rather
have a gay son of his killed in a accident than seeing him with another man. He
also told a woman MP that she was too ugly to be raped. Voter intention for him
is currently at 18%.

Faced with this type of
scenario, some in the national-popular Left –
particularly in Argentina – use the term "Honestism" (which was
actually coined by Martín Caparrós, in Argentinismos, to refer to the superficial
way in which criticism of Menem failed to question the established economic-social
model). The term is now used to refer to the anti-corruption discourses containing
an anti-political vein which end up elevating entrepreneurs or powerful people
who, eventually, end up defending the rich and do not improve the republic nor
public decency (like Temer or Mauricio Macri).

In Italy, “Justicialist” Mani
Pulite ended up destroying the traditional parties, which coexisted with the
Mafia, and handed over the prime-ministership to … Silvio Berlusconi. There
is undoubtedly some truth in the critique of the de-politicized versions of the
fight against corruption, which are based on the naive perception that without
corruption there would be more economic development and "the poor would
live better".

Clearly, development happens when development policies are
being applied, some countries actually develop with a significant degree of corruption
(South Korea), and "putting a stop to stealing" does not magically translate
into building sewers in Latin America’s popular suburbs. But it is no less true
that the anti-Honestist Left (not Caparrós) tends to over-expand these truths up
to the point of giving up the challenge of building a new public ethic, often
disregarding – or even being unable to see – genuine social demands opposing corruption
in politics.

The most emblematic case in this regard is that of Kirchnerism in
Argentina, almost neutralized by a way of financing politics (and not only
politics) which is very easy to prosecute after losing power.

On the other
hand, it is not true that the fight against corruption is always a "Right-wing"
thing. It was not in Argentina during the 1990s against Menem, it was not more
recently in Guatemala against the far-Right Otto Pérez Molina, and is not today
in Mexico, where Andrés Manuel López Obrador uses a fair dose of "Honestism"
in his presidential campaign.

"If they jail me, I’ll become a hero; if they kill me, I’ll become a martyr; and if they let me free, I’ll become president", Lula said while touring Brazil to recover political mystique. 

Something similar happens with the republican discourse:
it looks like an obstacle to progressive change while in government, but it is
fundamental if we are to maintain social and democratic conquests when government
is in the hands of Conservative forces.

"If they jail
me, I’ll become a hero; if they kill me, I’ll become a martyr; and if they let
me free, I’ll become president", Lula said while touring Brazil to recover
political mystique.

The Brazilian political scenario is now more uncertain, for
it remains to be seen what strategies the PT will deploy – beyond insisting on
Lula’s candidacy in order to show that he is being proscribed -, if support for
extremist Bolsonaro grows, and if it is possible for moderate presidential
candidates to emerge and take advantage of Lula's vacancy, and – importantly –
what will be left of Lula’s power if his lawyers fail to have him released from
prison soon.

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This article is being published as part of the partnership between Nueva Sociedad and democraciaAbierta. You can read the Spanish original here.