Unity of action and criminal stupidity

Enshrined in an official document, the solidarity between Brazil’s Workers’ Party, PT, and the drug-dealing Colombian guerrillas is not a theory, not an interpretation, not a conjecture. It is a fact no one dealing in public affairs in Brazil has the right to deny or hide.

By Olavo de Carvalho

Since 1990, the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores) has realized -- and Mr. Luís Inacio Lula da Silva has presided over -- no less than ten international conferences to discuss "proposals for unity of action," not only with other official socialist and communist parties -- what would be entirely legitimate -- but also with the Colombian FARC, other terrorist organizations and drug dealers in Latin America -- what is clearly immoral and criminal. After all, what kind of "unity of action" could there be between the licit and the illicit that would not be illicit in itself? What "unity of action" could there be between law and crime that would not be the abuse of the law for the practice of crime?

The expression I reproduced between quotes is not mine: it is taken from the text of the final resolution of the first São Paulo Forum, dated June 4, 1990. From this date to the last Forum, held in Havana last year, PT not only remained faithful to this infamous proposition, but raised itself from the simple “unity of action” to active solidarity, signing the Resolution number 9, of December 7, 2001, in which the assembly of the Forum, after condemning the anti-guerrilla action of the Colombian government as "State terrorism" and as "a true plan of war against the people," decided: "9. To confirm the legitimacy, the justice, and the need of the fight of the Colombian organizations, and to express their solidarity with them."

Enshrined in an official document, the solidarity unity between Brazil’s Workers’ Party, PT, and the drug-dealing Colombian guerrillas is not a theory, not an interpretation, not a conjecture. It is a fact no one dealing in public affairs in Brazil has the right to deny or hide.

The presidential front-runner Luís Inácio Lula da Silva himself does not have this right. However, he proclaims the inexistence of any connection between his own party and the FARC, undermining the authority of the signature he himself put under such a vile pact, thus making as fraudulent and void the one he is going to put on the Presidential commitment on January 1 (that is, if the ceremony of coming into office is not postponed until January 6, in honor of Fidel Castro).

Mr. Giancarlo Summa, Lula’s campaign assistant for the foreign press, does not have this right. However, he gave an official statement on October 17 denying any connection between PT and the FARC, proving only his own ability as a professional liar.

Most of all, the Superior Electoral Court does not have this right. However, they forbid candidate José Serra of touching on the subject in his electoral campaign, stealing the candidate’s right to state an urgent truth, giving support to the lie’s victory.

[It is true that the proof presented by Serra’s campaign coordinators was not Resolution number 9, which does not leave room for doubt, but a minor and indirect indication, a doubtful workbook from Rio Grande do Sul State Bureau of Education praising the FARC. But when it prohibited the candidate from mentioning this document, the Superior Electoral Court, according to what I read in CNN’s dispatch, did not limit itself to that: it vetoed, in a general manner, any reference that can associate PT to Fernandinho Beira-Mar, the drug dealer that distributes the cocaine for the FARC in Brazil.]

And, of course, the media does not have this right. But they avoid touching on the issues of the PT-FARC connections, or treat them as mere hypotheses vaguely suggested by the North American media, drawing away the reader’s attention from the documental proof and blocking the access of the people to essential information about the man about to govern them.

All the allusions to the PT-FARC connections bring to mind necessarily the association of Lula with local drug-dealing. The fact that this association exists -- even if it is remote, indirect, merely political and with no personal financial interest at stake -- is precisely the fact that Resolution number 9 testifies to irrefutably and without the least ambiguity: since the FARC are the main cocaine suppliers for Brazil, helping them is to help infest the country with drugs. Unity of action is unity of action: whoever helps a part helps the whole, and whoever helps the whole helps all the parts.

Denouncing this fact is not only a right, but a duty, the maximum and undeniable duty of any candidate running against Mr. da Silva. In truth, the candidacy of any politician directly and publicly associated with the FARC and indirectly with national drug-dealing via "unity of action" is illicit in itself and the Superior Electoral Court would have the elementary obligation of not even allowing its registration.

Instead of that, the Court forbids, together with the exhibition of the bad evidence presented by José Serra, the presentation of any other new evidence, good and conclusive as they might be. It forbids, in limine and without the least examination, any mention of the connections between the FARC and the Workers’ Party.

If Minister Gerardo Grossi, who signed this prohibition on October 18, ignores the São Paulo Forum, ignores the "unity of action," ignores Resolution number 9 and imagines that all there is to prove the PT-FARC connection is a mere workbook for Rio Grande teachers, then he is a cynical fool that allows himself, without an in-depth study of the existing evidence, to make a decision that might affect in a tragic way the destiny of a whole country.

If, on the contrary, he ignores none of this and still prevails (due to the weakness of particular evidence) to forbid the presentation of any other, then he is an accomplice of the “unity of action”, of the hiding of evidence, and author of the greatest electoral crime ever practiced along all the History of this country.

It does not seem to me that, between these two hypotheses, it would be possible to conceive a third. Being more inclined to attribute human sins to stupidity and lack of conscience than to conscious malice, I choose the first hypothesis and, acquitting the court of any malign premeditation, I am content to accuse it of massive incompetence which, due to the infernal magnitude of the consequences, leaves the dominion of innocent stupidity to enter what Eric Voegelin, speaking of the German judges who favored through incompetence the rise of Hitler, denominates ‘criminal stupidity’.