But, why have we marched? Since mid 2014, there is a criminal investigation called “Lava-Jato” (Operation Car Wash) going on, it is an investigation of what is been called by our newspapers the biggest scandal of corruption in the world, it envolves famous and important officials of Rousseff's government coalition and a big corruption scandal involving the country's state-run oil company Petrobras .Plus, we are living an economical and political crises related direct and indirectly with the “Lava-Jato” scandal. So far, our president is not involved with the scheme, despite the fact that she was the Energy Minister and chairwoman of Petrobras during much of the time that the alleged corruption took place. How much money are we talking about? Something like 800 billions of dollars.
So, we went to the streets on Sunday, on the same day the official statement from the government came out. I expected the president, but I knew she was a afraid of another “panelaço" (a type of protest very common in Latin America, where people go to the streets or the window of their buildings and beat on a pot in order to make noise) just like the one that happened when she first addressed the current political crises, however I didn’t expect she would send a depressed minister of justice and a out-of-the-reality secretary of the president to speak with the people.
I can’t expect much from our left-wing worker party that is doing one thing wrong after another and corruption scandal. The Minister of Justice, Jose E. Cardozo, looked very depressed (with an expression of fatigue) when he answered all the questions of the press on a public conference. Miguel Rosetto, the secretary of the president, appears so confuse and full of ideological gibberish that I honestly thought that both of them were thinking that people went to the street to support the government, not a single one of them were able to say something like “We might have done some mistakes…”
Somehow, they manage to make everyone even angrier, how is that possible? I don’t know. During their statements, you could hear on many neighborhoods the loud noise of “panelaço”.
I’m angry because since the first “biggest scandal of corruption in our country’s history”, people lost faith on politicians and democracy, that faith that makes us go with pride to vote, that faith that allows us to appreciate the words of a politician making a speech and that faith on the political debate. I felt that Brazilians started to think that it was nothing we could do, that corruption was normal in politics and that debate what is going on our congress was a waste of time.
I know politics is a complicated and, often, dirty world, but I believe in politics (not all the time in politicians), it is a way to express our believes, to make a better society, to develop and straight our democratic system. I believe that the debate of ideas, the respect of opinions and the expressions of our values as a liberal democracy are one of the many things that separate us from barbarians like ISIS.
Things changed in Brazil, not yesterday. They changed when we finally had an actual leader on the opposition, they changed on every election since the end of the dictatorship, on every debate of ideas, when we go to the streets to express our dissatisfaction with our gorvenment and when in the process of doing all that, there is no militar coup, no jail to those that oppose the government and a strong and stable liberal democracy.
I loved to hear so many people saying “Get out Dilma!"