Brazil is a very important neighbour on our southern border. Our relationship has always been very correct, even during the colonial era and its military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, which eerily coincides with the establishment of the Burnhamite dictatorship and the economic, social and political collapse of our country. As they slowly adopted democratic institutions, as we did after 1992, their economy and ours spurted ahead under the neo-liberal reforms instituted by the IMF. Because of their massive size, Brazil became one of the fastest growing emerging economies, and indeed became one of the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – that challenged the premises of the Old World Order.
But as with all countries that swallowed the neo-liberal conditionalities of the so-called “Washington Consensus”, to privatise, stabilise and globalise (their financial system), inequalities increased exponentially. Into this milieu stepped the leftist Workers Party of Lula da Silva, who, after four attempts, became President from 2003 to 2011, when he was succeeded by his protégé Dilma Rousseff. They successfully attacked poverty, but faced a backlash from the nouveau riche that created a very combustible political atmosphere. Corruption scandals were the downfall of the Workers Party, and saw Lula being imprisoned, and more “law and order” meritocratic parties becoming ascendant. The extreme right wing was epitomised by Jair Bolsonaro, who imitated US President Donald Trump’s conservative views on a wide spectrum of issues, and won the presidential elections in 2019.
In the meantime, Lula was released from prison with all charges dismissed, and was permitted to run for office, which he did, and narrowly won the bitterly contested election two months ago. During his term, Bolsonaro persistently questioned the veracity of the very electronic voting system that had given him victory – along the lines of Trump and his supporters. That, of course, resulted in the infamous attack by Trump’s supporters on the Capitol, resulting in seven deaths. Bolsonaro was obviously setting up Brazil for a similar outcome, when he did not concede defeat and flew to Florida two days before Lula’s inauguration. Thousands of his supporters had camped outside military bases, calling on the military to stage a coup. And it was not very surprising in a Brazil divided down the middle when Bolsonaro’s supporters, spurred by the unfounded claims of election fraud, invaded their Congress, the Presidential Palace when Lula was away, and the Supreme Court. The Federal Police have arrested more than a thousand attackers, and Lula has indicated they will face the full force of the law.
But there is a lesson in all of this for our own country. The APNU/AFC, as with Bolsonaro, have refused to accept the result of the March 2020 elections, and have now further divided our country along the ethnic lines that have bedevilled us since independence. They claim – with transparently fabricated allegations – that the PPP Government is discriminating against African Guyanese and creating an “emerging apartheid state”. Reducing our 2019s 48% swathe of poverty, even with oil revenues, will take time, so it becomes easy to persuade some of their constituents that they are being discriminated against.
As the Opposition use every incident where Africans might be randomly affected – such as the relocation of squatters from Mocha to facilitate the construction of a new highway from Eccles to Diamond – to persuade them of their persecution, they are provoking an attack on our democratic order and institutions. They have already delegitimised those institutions by calling the PPP Government an “illegal imposed cabal”. What we have seen, not only in the US and Brazil, but in other jurisdictions, is that extremism and disinformation can take on a self-reinforcing life of its own in an escalating spital that would lead to violence.
It is very encouraging that US President Joe Biden forthrightly announced: “I condemn the assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil…Brazil’s democratic institutions have our full support, and the will of the Brazilian people must not be undermined.”
And so for Guyana.
