Solon Brochado: At NoMínimo, Marcos Sá Corrêa paints a very grim picture of the country’s future after the referendum. And it has nothing to do with guns or public safety. By far, the best piece of analysis I’ve read so far, and one that makes me uneasy as to the future of our country.
The referendum backfired
As Juscelino Kubitschek, who president Lula has velleities to mimic, would say, “the monster has been released”. Kubitschek’s monster was the electorate. This same one that cast 60 million “no” votes. So much more than it gave Lula in 2002. It is loose. Poked with a short and very blunt stick by the referendum on gun commerce, it left its burrow before expected. And it will hardly go back to its cage before going to the ballots again in a year, when the presidency, state governments and the majority of the National Congress will be at stake. Then, yes, “no” will have a chance to show what it is all about.
So, from now on, politicians beware. This sunday’s decision has everything not to change anything regarding the safety of Brazil’s streets. Even so because the vote was meant to mantain things as they are, as bad as they may be, instead of pretending the “yes” could change them. Therefore, public life was never worth so little as now. It is true that, on election day, it is worth as little as ours. But, on other years, that’s more than enough.
After the result comes the party, after the party is time to take office and, with taking office, the nominations. And so, until disappointments put things back where they belong, the elected take to power the breath of the voting booths, fulfilling rites of change. But, this time, there’s nothing else to do. By saying “no”, the country howled with almost 60 million mouths. And, according to the referendum’s logic, that means there’s nothing automatic or symbolic that authorities can arrange, in order to give the impression the message has been understood. This voting was an unelection. And because of it, like Zuenir Ventura’s 1968, looks like it won’t end anytime soon.
What’s left of the plebiscite is pure repressed indignation. There are not 60 million Brazilians who want to buy guns. So, it is something else they want. More government, if possible. To retaliate the government, if no other option’s available. The Electoral Justice score was still spinning, when congresswoman Jandira Feghali, vice-president of the Frente Brasil Sem Armas (Brazil Without Guns Front), who preached the “yes” vote, squeezed the sour juice of defeat during an interview in CBN, while on the background the voice of a child called “mom”. That, she said, was a general “no” to the government “on all levels”. Bull’s eye. What Brazilians looked for in this badly explained and useless referendum was a way to say “no” to all that is out there. With R$ 270 million invested in a campaign and the mounting of electronic voting booths, a local, pacific and orderly version of the “que vayan todos” slogan, shouted along the banging of pots by Argentinians when things looked grimmer there than here, was fabricated.
And this “no” starts with Lula. It’s clear, as the congresswoman noted, that Lula had nothing to do with a consultation engendered by a parliamentary agreement for the approval of the Disarmament Statute. And he even distanced himself from the plebiscite, when the tide turned, from august till now, and the “yes” fell from 80% to 35% on the polls. But Lula also had nothing to do with what minister José Dirceu did in the office next door. Or with the money that treasurer Delúbio Soares put in his election. Not even with the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.
But a president that never has anything to do with anything ends up having to do with what he least expects. Starting this week, his popularity levels will inevitably be projected against the dark background of the generical 65% reproval that Brazilians fingered on booths this sunday. That front from three years ago, that put Lula faithfuls alongside voters capable of casting a ballot for anything to declare what they thought of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s eight years, and inflated a president that got up on the stands after the campaign and only got back down to board the Aerolula has been, once and for all, dissolved - or worse, pulverized.
The electorate has changed paths, bringing down everything that stood in its way. Research institutes, that in august gave 80% to the “yes” and were incapable of surmising the size of the “no” vote. The pundits, who spent their biographies on a campaign that put, on the other side, congressman Luiz Antônio Fleury and colonel Ubiratan Guimarães, two Carandiru veterans. The mainstream media, that only at the last minute gave up leading a crusade against firearms to cover a plebiscite that was ready to say something else. And above all else, the authors of the question, who summoned the Brazilian people to prohibit by voting “yes”, a trick never seen before, so that nothing could go wrong in a referendum where everything went wrong.
Actually, not everything. From it a warning is born, that might make Lula lose his enchantments with direct democracy’s easeness, which he envies in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Kubitscheck’s “monster” is less tamable than thought. And, forced to move, has been put in motion. There’s the risk that, free from the obligation of dividing into “yes” or “no”, it will disperse. In that case, it will take its rancour away from old candidacies, being old all those it already knows. That’s what it did in 1989. And we all know how that went. It was that presidential election that cornered the country among Lula and Fernando Collor. And by a hair’s breadth didn’t squeeze it among Fernando Collor and Leonel Brizola. First rounds that find the “monster” on the loose, ressented and not knowing where to go are great for bringing out of nowhere candidates for disastrous presidents.
