|
 Politics, like history, occurs in cycles. Brazil is passing through a cycle of democratic consolidation with small advances in social welfare: a timid Social Democracy (tSD), one that, in terms of the demands of the future, is also looking backwards. This has occurred since the last historical turn, the turn from the dictatorship to the democracy and the turn towards monetary stability.
Since then, Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula created two administrations with advances in growth with stability and with small advances in income distribution. Brazil moved forward but remained within the same cycle.
The economic growth did not change the product profile for high tech goods, nor did it bring about respect for the ecology; the modest income distribution did not shatter the social apartheid. It did not promote equal opportunity. The cities did not become more peaceful. Nor did the politics become less corrupt.
With the political corruption, family debt, technological inefficiency and appropriation of public higher education by only a rich parcel of the population, it is easy to imagine a future with the seduction of the voter by a candidate who defends morality, the charging of fees in the state universities, the suspension of the income transfer programs with their resources directed to investments in the infrastructure.
Twenty-five years of a single model, with advances, but with so many gaps that the time has come to see it as exhausted.
President Dilma has the chance to initiate a new cycle. If not, her administration will be the last of the present cycle. If she does not advance with reforms that signify positive inclinations, she runs the risk of seeing the exhaustion of the present-cycle proposals and the next election producing conservative governments, or falling into "leftism" or into "populism."
The first will not respect the advances in social welfare; the other two will not respect fiscal responsibility. Not to mention the catastrophic risk of antidemocratic options.
Instead of representing the latest step in the cycle of timid Social Democracy (tSD), the Dilma administration can be the first in a new cycle that frees the country from its shackles by beginning a Transformative Social Democracy (TSD). To do this, her administration must make the necessary turns and go beyond traditional growth with monetary stability and stipends.
It is necessary to undertake a political reform: implant measures to shield the public power from corruption; create mechanisms to control the violence; reorient the production process to safeguard the ecological equilibrium; foment an economy based upon knowledge of science and technology; make the Single Health System (SUS) work in the desired way; promote surmounting the "Brazil cost" stemming from corporativist rules and from the insufficient economic infrastructure; and, above all - the mother of all these reforms - promote a revolution in elementary/secondary education. All this should be done with respect for democratic rules and with fiscal responsibility.
Of all these changes, the only one that will permit President Dilma to leave her mark on Brazilian history, as the 21st-century Juscelino Kubitschek (JK), will be the initiation of the process of radically transforming elementary/secondary education and providing each Brazilian with the same opportunity to access quality education, independently of family income or city of residence.
This can be done by elevating all 200 thousand schools in Brazil to - at least - the quality of the nearly 200 schools that are currently federally run. To do this, it will be necessary to initiate the National Teachers Profession and a federal program of scholastic quality with full-day class sessions.
These two programs are not enough, nor will they yield their complete results throughout Brazil during one or even two presidential terms. But if she undertakes the right measures to promote a break with the sad picture of the Brazilian educational tragedy, the new president will be not only the first Brazilian woman president, she will also be the first president for a new time: the Dilma Cycle.
Cristovam Buarque is a professor at the University of Brasília and a PDT senator for the Federal District. You can visit his website at www.cristovam.org.br/portal2/, follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SEN_CRISTOVAM and write to him at cristovam@senado.gov.br.
New translations of his works of fiction The Subterranean Gods and Astricia are now available on Amazon.com.
Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Ricardo: I have a lot of faith in the future of Brazil. and articles like that tells me that Brazil is on its way to become a great country.
Here is a great article about Brazil.
***
The Economist
“Go south, young scientist”
An emerging power in research
Science in Brazil
Jan 6th 2011 | SÃO PAULO
http://www.economist.com/node/...1&fsrc=rss
POPULAR with foreigners looking for sun, sea and samba, Brazil wants to turn itself into a hot destination for seekers of science. Though its own bright graduates still head to Europe or the United States for PhDs or post-doctoral fellowships, nowadays that is more because science is an international affair than because they cannot study at home. The country wants more of them to return afterwards, and for the traffic to become two-way.
Brazil is no longer a scientific also-ran. It produces half a million graduates and 10,000 PhDs a year, ten times more than two decades ago.
Between 2002 and 2008 its share of the world’s scientific papers rose from 1.7% to 2.7%. It is a world leader in research on tropical medicine, bioenergy and plant biology. It spends 1% of its fast-growing GDP on research, half the rich-world share but almost double the average in the rest of Latin America. Its scientists are increasingly collaborating with those abroad: 30% of scientific papers by Brazilians now have a foreign co-author.
Becoming part of the global scientific endeavour is about more than national pride. By doing their own science, developing tropical countries can make sure that it is not only the problems of people in rich, temperate places that get solved.
São Paulo, Brazil’s richest state, is leading the effort. It has the country’s best universities, including the only two that make it into the top 300 in both of the best-known global rankings. Its constitution guarantees the state research foundation, known as FAPESP, 1% of the state government’s tax take. That amounted to $450m in 2010, and comes on top of money from the federal government.
This allows São Paulo to offer the money and facilities to attract foreign researchers. That will remain essential for a while. Brazil is short of established scientists, a legacy of the dire condition of its schools, even if these are now improving. “We have money, and plenty of ideas,” says Glaucia Mendes Souza, an expert on sugar-cane genomics at the University of São Paulo who co-ordinates FAPESP’s bioenergy research. “We need more research groups, and more people to lead them.”
Fortunately, this is a good moment to lure foreign scientists. Research funding is being squeezed in Europe and North America. Although Brazil’s super-strong currency may bring fears of deindustrialisation, it also makes all kinds of imports cheaper. But snaring academic superstars will be hard. Though Brazil pays junior researchers well by international standards, the same is not true at the top of the scale.
Publicly funded universities have no flexibility to offer more money to seal a deal. Nor can they offer research-only contracts: all tenured academics must teach undergraduates. Permanent positions can be filled only by open competition: heads of department cannot simply identify the best candidate and start negotiating. And those competitions include a public examination—in Portuguese.
Still, FAPESP is trying. It has advertised two-year fellowships at some São Paulo universities in Nature, a scientific journal read globally, and though most responses came from scientists early in their careers, it is mostly the more senior ones who are being invited for discussions. FAPESP hopes that during those two years they will learn Portuguese (lessons are included) and that some will want to stay.
Perhaps the main thing Brazil can offer scientists is plenty of room to grow. “You can have your own laboratory here,” says Anete Pereira de Souza, a plant geneticist at the University of Campinas, another big São Paulo state university. “You can start an entire new area of research. Here, you’re a pioneer.”
from PRINT EDITION | The Americas
.