Lula gets soaked with oil in the Amazon and popular car – 05/23/2023 – Vinicius Torres Freire

Ministers differ on oil exploration on the north coast of Brazil. About what to do with the demarcation of indigenous lands. The plan to subsidize popular cars is not compatible with the Treasury and Planning policy. Etc.

Conflicts are recurrent in governments, even more so in those that, bad and bad, are coalitions, it is obvious. Furthermore, some issues are unforeseen in the program and perhaps prompt a more heated debate on solutions. It may even be that a ministerial coordinator is entrusted with taking care of two turtles and one of them runs away — ineptitude. In theory, it’s understandable.

Having said that, it is unreasonable that an issue such as oil exploration in the sea off the north of Brazil could turn into a crisis, due to programmatic improvidence and rudimentary policy. It deals with the discussion of drilling wells in the waters that go from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte, the so-called Equatorial Margin. Petrobras has a particular eye on the sea in Amapa, closer to the mouth of the Amazon.

As is known, Ibama disallowed a first attempt at prospecting for oil in the region, which satisfied Minister Marina Silva (Environment), displeased Minister Alexandre Silveira (Mines and Energy) and infuriated Petrobras and almost all politicians and businessmen in the region. region.

At least on paper, a central part of Lula 3’s economic program would be the “green transition” (new technologies, industries, energy, business and solutions in general), although more concrete plans are still unknown —in fact, not even the abstract. One of the axes of the foreign policy is to recover the country’s relevance through environmental leadership.

In addition to dealing with so many socioeconomic development problems common to most of Brazil, governments and society in the Amazon will have to do so without causing the final destruction of the forest and the extermination of indigenous peoples, quilombolas or “ribeirinhos”.

The region also depends on things like the inefficiency of the Manaus Free Trade Zone. Or, at the extreme, informal work and businesses linked to irregularities or crimes, such as farming with environmental destruction, prospecting and trafficking — of gold, wood, drugs, etc. To a greater or lesser extent, all of this is wrong.

How can an issue that touches the nerves of a central (industrial) economic policy, foreign policy, the economic-environmental future of the country and the lives of millions of people, the poor majority, still be subject to a very narrow discussion? It’s not possible. If the organized exploitation of oil and minerals is not a solution for the Amazon, what is the project?

There is more inconsistency, improvidence and conflict.

Inventing subsidies for the “popular” car, if that is indeed the plan, is an idea that not only fails in economic, social, technological and environmental terms. It also clashes with the project to standardize taxes as much as possible and, thus, avoid distortions in the use of capital and work, which is the basis of the tax reform. It also conflicts with the Treasury and Planning project to recover revenue by ending special taxes or favors.

The government does not agree on what will become of the demarcation of indigenous lands, now under discussion in the Supreme Court. He doesn’t know how to deal with the MST, another topic of conflict. Frankly, it doesn’t even explain what it means by “agrarian reform” (which is no longer a program of broad social change, but of punctual distribution of land and technical-economic assistance, if that).

There are more conflicts, as in Ukraine’s war diplomacy, fiscal and monetary policy, etc. The summary of the opera is that such matters should be viewed on the basis of sound guidance, rather than being the subject of quarrels, nitpicking or demagoguery.

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