Dilma needs to govern with the people

Dilma Rousseff, re-elected president of Brazil, "does not have more options than to get closer to the social movements and to the population during her next term”, says the philosopher Jose Antonio Moroni, member of the Board of directors of the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (INESC). “One option is that Dilma is going to govern with people in the streets supporting her steps in the reform process that the whole world wants or she is going to have people against her", Moroni argues.

Dilma´s first government was „extremely technocratic ", says Moroni, with only few links to society. If Dilma repeats that strategy she will face a difficult time with the current Congress.

" She must give some signs soon ", says Moroni and thinks that Dilma has " to better explain " how she is going to deal with the topics such as political reform, criminalization of homophobia and demarcation of indigenous lands, an agenda ignored during the campaign.  "If she does not deal with these topics or leaves them behind as issues of secondary importance - like she did during her first mandate - she is going to have many difficulties to govern", Moroni explains.

The political reform, one of the priorities established by Dilma, cannot be done by the Congress, the philosopher supposes. Dilma has demonstrated a desire to carry out a plebiscite in order to treat this topic, but Moroni thinks that the current composition of parliament would impede any attempt to change the system of political parties. "The parliament has 28 political parties and internally does not have such leaders who could be in charge of the process of negotiations ", Moroni states.

Nevertheless, Moroni believes that if Dilma "really" puts this issue on the agenda and she calls upon the society to discuss it, showing that she is not just "a hostage of the state institutions ", it is possible to achieve this reform.

Fierce dispute

Moroni understands that the participation of organizations, social movements and groups linked to other political parties, like the Party of Socialism and Freedom (Psol), was a decisive factor in her re-election winning by the difference of little more than three million votes. "At the end of the campaign that what really made the difference was the participation of the militancy linked to the left –wing groups from the whole Brazil ", he says.

Besides a different context in comparison to the elections of 2010, Moroni evaluates that the difference was made by the opposition between the PT and the PSDB in the second round.  "These elections were almost elections of the PT from the remaining groups and political organizations. Against the mass media, against the financial market ".

Therefore, the philosopher thinks that though it is not a significant victory in terms of numerical difference, it is an important victory from the political point of view. "This result demonstrates that the project of incorporation, in order to look for a certain common features taking into account also all its contradictions, has some driving power in the society", Moroni affirms.

Source: INESC.