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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

sexta-feira, 25 de março de 2016

Zika virus: o terror da humanidade - enorme matéria do Washington Post

It’s Wednesday, so Kim Conley will run 11 miles, pretty much like any other day, except that on Wednesdays, she runs depleted — meaning she’s eaten exactly nothing. The idea is to be tough, reach down, push herself even harder than every other day.
She chews up the miles along the American River in Sacramento to keep shaving off seconds to keep getting closer to Rio. Conley, 30, has been running toward this summer’s Olympic Games for nearly a decade. But she’d also like to have a baby someday.
Two things stand between Conley and what could well be her last chance to win an Olympic medal. One is the clock, and she knows she can beat it. She’s lopped seconds off her time every year since she started running seriously. The other is a blood-sucking critter named Aedes, a globe-trotting mosquito with a world-class bite.
By the millions, Aedes skeeters are feeding on people who carry an unpredictable virus named Zika, then flitting over to their next victim, chomping down and spreading the disease. The bug’s bites have transmitted the virus to people in more than 20 countries: to pregnant mothers, with devastating consequences for their unborn children; to thousands of other people, who end up with fairly minor aches; and quite possibly this summer, to the best athletes in the world, gathered in one vulnerable place, wearing very little clothing.
The scramble to solve the Zika puzzle requires scientists to figure out exactly what threat a hardy breed of mosquitoes poses to people along the virus’s jagged journey. Crossing four continents since the first major outbreak nine years ago, Zika’s painful path now touches an Olympic runner in California, and before her a nurse from Indiana, pregnant women in Colombia, a misshapen infant in Brazil, immunologists in Bethesda, Md., all the way back to the owner of a souvenir shop on a tiny island in the South Pacific, 1,100 miles southeast of the Philippines. The hunt to understand Zika is a race to the very edge of science’s frontier, a race against the ticking clock of myriad pregnancies.
Conley’s passion and training push her to keep running toward Rio, even as a mounting clamor of warnings urge her to consider a detour. On a cool, sunny California morning at the cusp of spring, she can run straight ahead or look instead at the destruction and anxiety that Zika has caused, anguishing expectant mothers from Brazil up into the Caribbean and now even in the United States.
This is the story of Zika’s path so far, from its leading edge today back to its first appearance on a Pacific island in 2007. As the virus’s inexorable march brings it our way, scientists and governments are issuing a stream of strongly worded alerts. The chief of the federal bureaucracy in Washington this month urgently warned government employees to think twice about going to Brazil and other countries where the virus is rampant. The World Health Organization and the U.S. military put out similar warnings. But the U.S. Olympic Committee, buffeted between its desire to give elite athletes their moment  and its responsibility to protect competitors and their fans, has held back, issuing no guidance, announcing only that it will seek counsel from medical advisers.
Conley tries not to think about Zika. Her team — manager, agent, sports psychologist, physiologist, sponsor — is all about confidence: Rio or bust. Conley is a planner. She used to think in units of a school year. Then, preparing to run middle- and long-distance events in the London Olympics four years ago, she learned that elite athletes think in “quads,” four-year cycles leading to the next Games. After Conley failed to get past the qualifying heats in London, she’s spent this quad entirely focused on next steps, to Rio, then Tokyo in 2020, then maybe coaching, or becoming a physical therapist, or having a baby. Zika and pregnancy
Her husband and coach, Drew Wartenburg, thinks shorter term. He’s forever nudging Kim to live in the moment. “I call myself more an actor than a planner,” he says.
They haven’t talked much about kids, except that a baby would fit into their lives after Kim finishes running competitively. Then they started hearing about newborns in Brazil with heads that came out too small and pregnant women who felt compelled to consider abortions when they wanted to be preparing to raise a child.
Now, Conley and Wartenburg have to think about it. They’ve talked about whether Conley’s 28-year-old sister, already at the point where she wants a baby, should travel to Rio to watch Kim run. “She’s someone who probably shouldn’t go,” Conley says. “For us, we just have to wait.”
Zika keeps poking its head into their plans. Friends and neighbors keep asking about it. Family, too. “You want them to be excited about your Olympic journey,” Conley says, “and they’re mostly concerned about the Zika virus, and that’s too bad.”
Wartenburg the coach uses the virus as a motivator. “This is about confronting obstacles,” he says. “Part of what makes athletes elite is not letting any obstacle stand in your way.”
Conley glances over at him, eyebrow cocked. It’s not clear she’s buying this as a motivational tool.
Wartenburg the husband tries another tack. “You can’t have thousands of different athletes making thousands of different decisions about ‘Do I wrap myself in mosquito nets, or what?’ That’s not a burden I want. We just have to trust that someone will assess the risk and that their thinking will trickle down to us.”
Conley is quiet. When she speaks, it’s in a small voice: “No one’s said, ‘Don’t go.’ ”

January 2016: A scary mask

Barbara Ihrke went with plenty of mosquito repellent. When Ihrke, a 61-year-old nurse, decided to travel from Indiana to Haiti in January to teach a seminar in transcultural nursing, she’d heard a bit about Zika but hadn’t paid much attention to the news from Brazil.
Despite slathering herself with repellent, Ihrke got a few bites. She thought nothing of it. She came home in late January, feeling fine.
Then, on her fifth day back in Marion, Ind., she got a low-grade headache. She felt tired, her joints swelled up, and a rash spread over much of her body, including, for a couple of days, on her face.
Zika, it turned out, was already in the Caribbean, and people such as Ihrke were bringing it home with them. Enough cases had popped up in Haiti that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the island nation a place of extreme concern.
Two days after her symptoms hit, Ihrke, who works as vice president of academic affairs at Indiana Wesleyan University’s nursing school, called her school’s health center and said, “I think I have Zika.” She was matter-of-fact. Trained in tropical medicine, she reacted more calmly than a layman might have.
By the time she got to the clinic an hour later, the staff had printed out fact sheets from the CDC on Zika. Tests showed her white-blood-cell count had dropped by half. She stayed home that weekend and went to work the next Monday wearing a mask — not because she was putting anyone else at risk of infection, but for her own protection, because of her low blood count. What can be done to prevent Zika?
As casually as Ihrke reacted to the virus, those around her were more alarmed, especially during the eight days when she wore the mask. “People took a step back when they saw it,” she says.
When one man pulled away and announced that his wife was pregnant, Ihrke set him straight: “I can’t give this to you, and there are no mosquitoes in Indiana in February.”
That assurance wasn’t enough for some people. Ihrke can’t guarantee that the virus isn’t still active in her bloodstream, and some neighbors have told her they’re afraid to get too close.
Still, Ihrke felt it was important to identify herself as Indiana’s first Zika case, even though state health officials had assured her they’d keep her identity secret. “Part of my calling is to help us react to illnesses, so I decided I should self-identify because I have the ability to explain,” she says.
Ihrke’s professional detachment lets her see that for most victims, Zika is no big deal. Having lived and worked in Africa, she says, “knowing that thousands of people die every day from malaria and now seeing that we’re spending millions of dollars on Zika, well, at times we in the U.S. are not rational about what we decide is scariest. We’ve gone into the Ebola mentality, which is that the sky is falling. We invested so much money in making everybody in America Ebola-prepared, and for what, maybe 10 cases in the U.S.? In a year or two, we’ll hardly remember Zika.”
Less than two weeks after she first felt ill, Ihrke got the all-clear, a call from the health center telling her that her blood count was back to normal.
She’s ready to return to Haiti, proposing to study the incidence of birth defects there in the coming year. But she knows heading into Zika’s lair is not the right choice for some people. “For the Olympic athletes, it’s hard,” Ihrke says. “Anyone who wanted to be pregnant, I’d say, ‘Are you certain this is what you want to do?’ ”

November 2015: ‘I was five months pregnant’

Two Colombian teenagers, both eight months pregnant, stand outside a health clinic in Cartagena, waiting to know what Zika has done to their babies.
“You got it, too?” Yisleth Luna Cardenas, 18, asks Darley Martinez Cabarcas, who is 17.
“When I was five months pregnant,” Darley says, recalling the headaches and fever she had in November. “I see the news. I see the babies being born with big problems. Aren’t you worried?”
Yisleth dealt with Zika anxiety by focusing not on possible birth defects, but on delivering her first baby: “Will it be a Caesarean section? How painful will the labor be?”
Darley cracks a smile, enjoying a rare shared moment in what she calls the “solitude of being pregnant with Zika.”
“I know everyone is worried — men, too — but so much falls to the women,” she says. “We carry the babies, and then we will raise the babies.” A pause. “My boyfriend wanted me to abort.”
A Catholic, Darley says it is wrong to have an abortion. She is no longer in touch with the baby’s father.
Now, in March, she waits. She knows the virus has been linked to severe birth defects, including microcephaly, the interrupted development of the skull that leads to abnormally small heads and brain damage. The virus has been active in Colombia long enough to have infected thousands of pregnant women, but not yet long enough to reveal whether the defects that have become rampant in Brazil will happen here. What is microcephaly?
Zika’s aches subside quickly; the real pain sets in when the women are strong enough to start worrying about what the virus may have done to the baby inside them. “It’s a lonely time,” Darley says. Being pregnant with Zika is not something you can talk to your mother about, because it’s so new. “I can’t wait to have the baby in my arms, to see with my own eyes that he is okay.”
At the Juan Felipe Gomez Escobar Foundation, a nonprofit serving low-income, teenage mothers, Darley and Yisleth attend job skill classes and get sonograms.
The scans show no sign of microcephaly. But the doctors also say that developmental and neurological problems linked to Zika might not show up on a scan.
Darley goes home to wait with her mother, sister and grandmother — her father no longer lives with the family. “Women have it hard,” she says.

October 2015: A tiny skull

While Darley and Yisleth wait, Zika’s impact is already clear 3,000 miles to the southeast, where a mother and a physical therapist try to soothe an agitated, bent baby boy named Arthur. The therapist places Arthur face-down on a yellow exercise ball. He immediately begins to cry. The way his 5-month-old body is shaped, shoulders hunched, arms and legs perpetually bent and clenched — typical for microcephalic babies — doing anything on his stomach feels uncomfortable.
The therapist rubs his back while his mother, Rozilene Ferreira de Mesquita, puts a pacifier in his mouth.
“Calm down,” she whispers.
Arthur has appointments lined up for visual testing, motor-skill development and auditory stimulation at the Altino Ventura Foundation hospital in the Brazilian city of Recife. On Thursdays, dozens of mothers of babies with abnormally small heads gather here for therapy sessions, group talks and one-month birthday celebrations. Of 6,671 suspected microcephaly cases in Brazil, 1,819 of them are in this state, Pernambuco, the highest proportion in the country.
Recife, the ‘ground zero’ of the zika virus
Thousands of parents now spend their days visiting doctors who X-ray, scan, probe, bend and measure their babies to try to understand what Zika has done. Just three days into March, de Mesquita has already filled a piece of notebook paper with 25 doctors’ visits Arthur must make at eight hospitals over the course of the month.
She refuses to miss an appointment. Once her maternity leave ended, she resorted to doctors’ notes to explain her absence from work. She expects to lose her job. Then the family will subsist on her husband’s minimum-wage salary of $220 per month.
“I work for my son now,” she says. “My son is my boss, and he’s a picky boss.”
De Mesquita, 39, contracted Zika last March, the second month of her pregnancy, after a mosquito-swarmed Friday on the beach in Suape, a town south of Recife where her husband worked as a hotel security guard.
The next weekend, she woke feeling achy, with a rash on her arms and torso, and an infuriating itch. Recife was not yet known as the epicenter of a hemisphere-wide outbreak. There were as yet no billboards along the highways warning about microcephaly. In the hallways of the state health ministry, where de Mesquita worked as a cleaner, she’d never heard the name Zika.
She went to her neighborhood clinic, already packed with people with the same symptoms. Doctors treated her for an allergic reaction, which didn’t help, then tested her for dengue fever and rubella.
“I was so happy when they came out negative,” she says. “But it turned out that this was worse.”
Arthur Ferreira da Conceicao was born on Oct. 1 after a relatively painless two hours of labor, far easier than her first son, 15 years earlier. But Arthur’s body felt cold, and his skull was tiny, just 11 inches in circumference. The forehead was foreshortened. The back of his head was flat, with wrinkled skin. Within minutes, a doctor informed her there was a problem: Arthur had microcephaly. De Mesquita hadn’t heard the term.
“It’s weird, “ the doctor told her, “we already have seven other babies at the hospital with that right now.”
Arthur couldn’t leave the hospital for 27 days. As he has grown, his problems have deepened. His body seems frozen in a rictus of tension.
His mother writes lists of questions for the doctors: Can he see or hear? Will he ever walk, talk, read, go to school? The answers are always the same: “I don’t know.”
In her small concrete house in a hillside slum, de Mesquita has filled Arthur’s crib with toys the therapists recommend. She built a rattle out of a water bottle filled with black beans, to test his hearing. She made a paddle with black and white stripes that she shines with a flashlight to encourage visual perception. On the wall of Arthur’s room, bug repellent mists from a plug-in dispenser.
To get to their first appointment, de Mesquita wakes at 4 a.m., tidies up, does the laundry, and feeds Arthur. She kisses her husband goodbye and walks into a warm, drizzling morning as insects trill and roosters crow. She is resigned to another trying commute.
“People are always staring,” de Mesquita says. “I know people are thinking, ‘What a small head. They’re not thinking, ‘Oh, that baby’s beautiful.’ ”
She transfers from the bus to a packed subway car. Passengers crowded around her stare at Arthur. A woman in a yellow tank top speaks loudly to de Mesquita, and others turn to look: “Did you have Zika? You had that thing?”
De Mesquita ignores the passengers and tries to soothe Arthur, who is sobbing, heaving, his face contorted in anguish.
“Calma,” she says, rubbing his head.
Her days unspool in waiting rooms on rows of hard plastic chairs bolted in place. Her hours slip by in a numbing drift of chitchat with other microcephaly moms. The moms started a WhatsApp group — more than 120 women strong — to share child-care tips for microcephaly kids.
De Mesquita arrives at 6:45 a.m. at this morning’s hospital, the Association for the Assistance of Children with Deficiencies. She takes a number, 300, and waits for a doctor, who undresses Arthur, claps next to each ear, blows on his eyes, testing his sensations. Arthur’s body at rest is clenched and rigid, his hands in fists, his legs crossed. As the doctor pulls Arthur’s shoulders back, stretching his chest, the baby screams.
“Don’t cry,” de Mesquita whispers.
Five hours later, she walks back to the bus station and opens her umbrella to protect Arthur from the blazing sun.
A woman comes up to de Mesquita. “Jesus only gives children like this to people who are really strong, who are warriors,” the woman says. “You have the capacity to care for him. Someone without faith can’t do it, but you have faith.”
De Mesquita stands up, hefting Arthur onto her hip.
“That’s my bus,” she says.

Inside a lab where researchers are racing to diagnose Zika

Play Video1:50
As the Zika virus continues to spread, scientists in Recife, Brazil, are searching for a quicker, less expensive test to detect the virus. (Whitney Leaming,Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

July 2015: A new mystery

Wing-Pui Kong opens a white mini-freezer, the size found in many a dorm room, and slides out a box labeled “Zik V DNA Vaccine.” He lifts the cover and removes one of about a dozen tiny vials of DNA plasmas that he and his colleagues at the Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Md., have synthesized to see if they can prompt cells to protect against the Zika virus. Countries that have the Zika virus
“Time is important,” Kong says. “When you see the pictures of the babies. . . . ” He stops himself. “I don’t really want to look at those pictures. I can’t imagine being those parents.”
Ever since last July, when a Brazilian physician pulled aside one of the Vaccine Research Center’s top scientists at a conference in Rockville, warning him about a disturbing, rampant virus, Kong’s lab on the campus of the National Institutes of Health has been transformed into an anti-Zika war room. Rows of scientists painstakingly design and test dozens of different sequences of DNA, searching for those that might prompt creation of the perfect protein.
Around the country, scientists are studying cells isolated from people recovering from Zika. They need to learn how the virus works on people, why symptoms show up as they have, and how to make the human body defend itself. The goal is a vaccine, produced in the millions of doses, to be given to young children, ideally a one-time, lifelong immunization.
On the fourth floor of the Vaccine Research Center, created 16 years ago to develop protection against HIV, the best candidates for a vaccine will be injected into lab mice to see if they become immunized.
“The first round of mouse immunizations have not been the best,” says Barney Graham, the virologist who runs the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory. “So we continue. Every week, there’s another mouse experiment.”
At the moment, the freezer contains 29 bacterial recipes. The goal is to begin testing vaccines this fall.
In lab after lab in their modern glass-and-concrete building, people who’d been working on HIV, Middle East respiratory syndrome or flu vaccines have shifted gears and launched a full-on drive against Zika. They still think mostly in timelines composed of years and decades, but that’s changing. In the past eight years, thanks mainly to research conducted toward an HIV vaccine, the process has sped up as researchers map the atomic structures of a virus and identify antibodies that lead toward a vaccine. Starting in 2003, it took 20 months to develop a vaccine to be tested against SARS. When avian flu hit a couple of years later, the process was slimmed down to 11 months. And in 2009’s H5N1 virus outbreak, the lab got its development work done in four months.
If all goes well in Bethesda, a vaccine could be ready for distribution in 2018.
“We’re always in a hurry here,” Graham says. “We’re still in a hurry on HIV even though it’s been 15 years. But we’re seeing more and more of these emerging, disruptive viruses now — it’s a sign of changes in ecology, as the ecosystems change from climate shifts or increased mobility.”
Last July, two years after a big outbreak of chikungunya virus in South America, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases held a conference in Rockville on “Gaps and Opportunities in Chikungunya Research.” In a hallway during a break, a physician from Brazil, Roberto Jose da Silva Badaro, made it his business to find Graham. Chikungunya was indeed rampant and troublesome, Badaro said, but something new had cropped up in his region. Chikungunya and dengue fever in Brazil
All spring, patients in Bahia and neighboring Brazilian states had been coming down with rash and mild fever, but the symptoms were not quite the same as those from other mosquito-borne viruses. Brazilian doctors wondered if they were seeing measles, rubella, West Nile, Mayaro virus or an adverse reaction to some vaccine.
By late spring, the number of Zika cases in Bahia was tripling every week. At neighborhood clinics, people waited for hours to see a doctor.
A medical team led by a virologist at the Federal University of Bahia, Gubio Soares, isolated the Zika virus. They rushed to tell authorities, including Badaro, Bahia’s vice minister of health.
Over the summer, doctors began to see a spike in Guillain-Barré syndrome, a condition marked by temporary paralysis. In the second half of last year, the state recorded nearly 140 cases, seven times higher than normal. Hospitals scrambled to find enough intensive-care beds for all the patients.
“It was a war,” Badaro says.
The battle continues: Some pregnant women have left Brazil, heading for colder climates in Europe and the United States. Women have sought out illicit abortions, illegal in Brazil under almost all circumstances. Vendors in a downtown Rio market said Cytotec, a banned medication for stomach ulcers, is in high demand for home abortions. Some pregnant women choose to become virtual prisoners, refusing to leave home except for emergencies.
“You guys are discussing something that’s really in the past,” Badaro told U.S. researchers. “What’s coming is the Zika virus.”
Bahia, he told them, had already seen 63,000 Zika cases.
Graham had heard of Zika — he knew it had been discovered in Africa in the 1940s, and that there’d been an outbreak in the South Pacific a few years ago, but he’d not heard of it causing alarming symptoms.
Graham and his colleagues soon started grabbing researchers off other projects.
“When we see a virus spreading like that, we take notice,” Graham says. “People like Dr. Badaro are the sentinel. He was looking for chikungunya, and he found Zika.”

Spring 2007: A spreading rash

For hours each night, the “nonstop Micronesian beat” of V6AI, the only radio station in the island nation of Yap, transmits an endless loop of public service announcements warning residents to “sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets” and empty open containers where mosquitoes might breed.
Mosquito bites used to be just a nuisance, a small price to pay for living in South Pacific paradise. But in 2007, Zika hit Yap with a powerhouse punch — an alien virus zapping an isolated population in a place with few defenses against the bug.
But in little more than a year after it first hit Yap in spring of 2007, Zika — named after the forest in Uganda where the virus was discovered in 1947 — infected about 7,000 of the island’s 11,000 residents. Most people had mild symptoms or none at all. Doctors thought they were seeing dengue, but the symptoms weren’t quite right. They called in tropical-disease experts from the CDC and WHO. Lab tests determined the culprit: Zika.
“We probably didn’t pick it up till the third or fourth week,” says James Edilyong, a Yap native who is chief of staff at Yap State Hospital. People streamed into the hospital, but “really, we had nothing we could do for them.”
Andy Choor, 32, thought he had a cold, maybe a light flu. His temperature flared, his appetite waned. Everywhere around him, “people were going down. You almost knew who had it because they were down for three or four days, and you just didn’t see them,” he recalls.
Choor, who owns a souvenir and crafts shop, felt Zika’s impact at the cash register: Tourists — lifeblood of the island’s economy — became scarce. Life on the island changed. People who had never really cared about bug bites were now staying inside more. Things seemed quieter, more subdued.
“It was alarming, and people are still concerned,” he says, even though the virus has largely vanished from the island.
Edilyong, 48, was among the first in Yap to get Zika. “I’ve had the privilege to have both Zika and dengue, and dengue was much worse,” he says. His Zika rash lasted only a few hours; the aches resolved themselves within a day.
From Yap, Zika made its way 5,000 miles east to French Polynesia in 2013 and on to Japan the next year.
After so many microcephalic babies were born in Brazil, doctors in the Pacific islands went back to see if they had missed a spike in birth defects. The results are inconclusive — in Polynesia, there had been an unusual number of malformations of the central nervous system in babies and miscarried fetuses, but the numbers were not large enough to cause alarm, and a connection to Zika remains unproven.
Yap saw no such cluster of defects, Edilyong says: “Whatever happened to Zika to cause the defects in Brazil hadn’t happened when the virus was active here.”
In Yap and Polynesia, Zika seemed to burn through in less than a year. No cases have been reported since the outbreak faded, doctors said.
How human-made environmental factors help spread Zika and other diseases
The fear hasn’t gone away, but the hope that life can be normal again has returned. “We never had a panic about it,” Edilyong says. “But people became more anxious after other countries got the outbreak, after we heard about the birth defects. We get the word out about what to do, how to help prevent the spread. We talk to the chiefs, and the message goes right to the villages. And we get people to clean up their yards and empty water containers. We’re okay, we watch out for each other.”

March 2016: Race against risk

Kim Conley runs to get to Rio. She runs for the satisfaction of knowing that she’s given it her all. “Really, it’s for the afterglow,” she says, “the feeling of the effort.”
She feels a fire, a will that is evident in her steely blue eyes, her zest for the daily punishment she endures, and now in her willingness to take a chance. Until someone in authority tells her otherwise, she’s determined to outrun the danger. She has to believe she can beat an opponent named Zika.
Fisher reported from Sacramento and Washington; Partlow from Brazil; and Jordan from Colombia. Julie Tate in Washington and Anna Kaiser in Brazil contributed to this report.
Read more stories about the Zika virus: 
Zika prompts urgent debate about abortion in Latin America
Venezuela faces ‘worst-case scenario’ as Zika outbreak expands
What’s really scary about the Zika virus are the things we don’t know
Why Zika is ‘much more insidious, cunning and evil’ than Ebola
Read our full coverage on the Zika virus
Marc Fisher, a senior editor, writes about most anything. He’s been The Post’s enterprise editor, local columnist and Berlin bureau chief, and he’s covered politics, education, pop culture, and much else in three decades on the Metro, Style, National and Foreign desks.
Joshua Partlow is The Post’s bureau chief in Mexico. He has served previously as the bureau chief in Kabul and as a correspondent in Brazil and Iraq.
Mary Jordan is a national correspondent for the Washington Post covering the 2016 presidential campaign. She served as the co-bureau chief of the Post’s London, Mexico and Tokyo bureaus, and was the head of content of Washington Post Live, which organizes forums and debates.

Debate sobre o Free Trade nos EUA: esclarecendo posicoes -

Eu havia reagido (https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks/posts/1115225561874226), dias atrás, à carta de um leitor, pinçada na internet, questionando a validade do livre comércio do ponto de vista dos trabalhadores, mas não havia ainda lido o artigo original sobre essa questão, que me havia escapado. Agora leio o artigo e posto aqui, junto com minhas observacões feitas antes e depois de ter postado no Facebook.
Vejamos o que diz o artigo, e, depois, eu agrego meus comentários que foram feitos, é preciso dizer, PREVIAMENTE à leitura deste artigo, e baseado apenas num comentário de leitor.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

What Americans really think about free trade

For decades, the benefits of free trade have been something that both political parties have agreed on. Eliminating tariffs, proponents said, would reduce the cost of goods for U.S. consumers and put more people to work in exporting industries.
Recently, though, some economists have concluded that the costs of free trade have been greater than expected, and both Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump have run successful presidential primary campaigns on protectionist platforms. Many of their supporters are now rejecting more than half a century of bipartisan economic consensus.
Outside of Sanders's and Trump's coalitions, however, there is little evidence of a broad reaction against free trade. Americans are deeply conflicted about the issue, as shown in two recent polls that came to opposite conclusions about public opinion on free trade.
One was a Gallup poll published last month, which found that a majority of Americans — 58 percent — see foreign trade as an economic opportunity. Just 33 percent said foreign trade was an economic threat. The share of respondents who are optimistic about trade has increased since the financial crisis. Perhaps as Americans are seeing the country as more economically secure, they've become less worried about competition from abroad.
Seven years ago, at the beginning of 2009, just 44 percent of those polled said that trade presented an opportunity. Among Democrats — who are more optimistic about the state of the economy under President Obama — the number seeing economic opportunity in trade increased even more sharply, from 43 percent in 2009 to 63 percent today. The figure among Republicans shifted from 45 percent to 50 percent.
That finding — overall optimism about trade, with partisan divisions — contrasted with the conclusion of a poll published Thursday by Bloomberg. "Opposition to free trade is a unifying concept even in a deeply divided electorate," the authors wrote.
Some of the Bloomberg poll's more striking findings seem to suggest a deep skepticism of international economic exchange. For example, Americans are overwhelmingly resistant to the idea of foreign ownership of factories on U.S. soil. Sixty-eight percent said they'd prefer a domestically owned factory in their communities to a Chinese-owned plant offering twice as many jobs.
Likewise, nearly two-thirds said that there should be more restrictions on imported goods, and 82 percent said they'd be willing to pay "a little more" for domestically produced goods in order to protect domestic workers from foreign competition.
These contrasting results show that Americans see both sides of the debate over trade. They also suggest that politicians can win over voters by focusing on either the costs or the benefits, Frank Newport, the editor in chief at Gallup, said in an interview.
"Americans are very much looking for guidance" on complex economic issues, he said. "You can shift people one way or the other. They’re open to argument."
For example, Newport noted, the Bloomberg poll asked about restrictions on imports, but not on exports, which would mean fewer opportunities for U.S. workers. Americans even have different feelings about imports depending on the industry. They are comfortable with the idea of imported electronics but want to protect American agriculture, Gallup has found.
A Pew poll last year revealed even more contradictions. Respondents were more likely to say that free trade had helped their families' finances than that free trade had made them worse off. When asked about the economy in general, though, they were more negative. The poll found that Americans were equally divided on the question of whether free trade improved economic growth, and much less likely to say that trade created opportunities for employment than that it reduced wages and put Americans out of work.
Previously, economists had argued that workers displaced because of competition with manufacturers overseas would quickly find work in other sectors. That hasn't happened, wrote economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson in a paper earlier this year. The costs of trade in the labor market have been higher than predicted, and they've been concentrated in particular sectors and regions of the country.
Those consequences for particular groups aren't clearly reflected in the overall polling data. As Newport said, there are some people in both parties who vehemently oppose trade, maybe because they have been affected by globalization themselves. Those are the groups that Trump and Sanders hope will help mobilize their campaigns.
These candidates might be able to win over some voters if they can focus on how competition from imports has negatively affected those workers, Newport said. "Jobs," he added, is "a magic word."
"There are a few words out there that Americans react very strongly to," he said. "They're willing to sanction almost anything to bring in more jobs."
Max Ehrenfreund writes for Wonkblog and compiles Wonkbook, a daily policy newsletter. You can subscribe here. Before joining The Washington Post, Ehrenfreund wrote for the Washington Monthly and The Sacramento Bee.
 
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Meus comentários (PRA) feitos previamente à leitura deste artigo:
(https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks/posts/1115225561874226

Livre comércio só interessa às corporações?

Sou um leitor compulsivo, doentio. Leio não apenas as matérias objetivas -- os "reports", como se diz na linguagem do jornalismo americano, que se distinguem das "analysis", quando o jornalista elabora sobre a matéria -- como também os artigos de opinião, que por vezes contém dados ou argumentos que não estão nos dois primeiros. Mas leio também, por incrível que pareça, cartas de leitores e reações virtuais nas colunas de opinião, que são reveladoras do que vai pela cabeça do público em geral, que é um pouco a opinião da média da população (claro, tem muito ativista de causas determinadas, mas eu sei distinguir isso também).
Pois, o que encontro na minha versão eletrônica do Washington Post? Esta diatribe de um leitor contra um artigo anterior que eu não li (mas isso não importa muito, pois importa a tese):

"Free trade is a myth; all we have is managed trade. The question is for whom? In practice, only corporations benefit. Why not workers also?" -- Bruce Bartlett

Concordo inteiramente com o leitor em que não existe Free Trade, apenas Managed Trade, uma espécie de mercantilismo bem comportado, supervisionado de forma muito ineficiente por essa tia gorda (quase 170 membros) e complacente que se chama OMC.
Mas a pergunta dele é absolutamente equivocada: seja free, seja managed, o trade é para consumidores, e para empresas que se abastecem no mercado, ou seja, não é, nunca foi, um jogo de soma zero como sua última afirmação tenta fazer crer.
Não são apenas as corporações que se benficiam do comércio livre. Se esse comércio não fosse livre, esse leitor, Bruce Bartlett, nunca poderia comprar o seu microondas por apenas 80 dólares; se fosse fabricado nos EUA, ou na Europa, não saíria por menos de 180 ou 200 dólares. Não sei se vou convencê-lo, mas as pessoas precisam tomar consciência que, independentemente das formas mais ou menos liberais que regulam o comércio internacional, ele sempre se faz, em última instância, em benefício dos consumidores. No meio, as corporações lucram, o que é óbvio, mas o que pretende esse leitor? Mágica? Ele quer um microondas a 80 dólares feito no seu Arkansas natal? Esqueça...

Addendum: Agrego o que acabo de postar num debate com um amigo de velhas negociações comerciais:
"... eu acho que os grandes problemas, as maiores alienações dos tecnoburocratas como nós (e eu me incluo nessa tropa) é sempre olhar a realidade pela ótica dos nossos materiais privilegiados: relatórios e informações de outros burocratas, documentos de organizações internacionais e livros e artigos de acadêmicos. Isso é uma distorção. O mundo lá fora, o das grandes corporações, das empresas, das pessoas, está se movimentando, e o que quer que façam os governos, estes vão ter em algum momento de se adaptar aos movimentos reais das economias de mercado."

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Depois, sustentei um debate na sequência desta postagem no Facebook, que transcrevo aqui porque ele é instrutivo para todos: 

Marcos Fernandes Não, a todos.....mas que mal faz se sim!? Cadeia de valor diversificada regionalmente...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Paulo Roberto de Almeida Sim, qual é o problema das cadeias de valor diversificadas regionalmente? Você pode me indicar qual é, exatamente, o problema? Existe um complô de forças poderosas contra os interesses dos consumidores? Me explique isso direitinho...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Write a reply...

Thiago D'Ávila
Thiago D'Ávila Paulo Roberto de Almeida, só um detalhe: o comentarista da notícia não falava em consumidores. A pergunta dele foi outra: "Why not workers also?" Ele está perguntando sobre workers...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Paulo Roberto de Almeida O que são trabalhadores, Thiago D'Ávila, se não consumidores? Vc já se deu conta que seus salários de mercado valem muito mais, compram muito mais graças ao livre comércio? Ou vc acha que sobraria muita coisa se eles tivessem de comprar aqueles enormes televisores made in America?
 Thiago D'Ávila Bem, aí teremos uma infinidade de assuntos interligados. Primeiro, nem todo consumidor é trabalhador (gente rica que não trabalha, criança, idoso aposentado, adulto desempregado, doentes, etc). Trabalhador é uma categoria e consumidor é outra, ainda que em Economia ocorram interligações na análise. Segundo, consumidor beneficiado com baixo preço nem de longe significa trabalhador beneficiado. Se você compra, a preço de banana, uma camisa feita por trabalhador escravo na Ásia, você é um consumidor beneficiado por um trabalhador claramente prejudicado. A pergunta dele é sobre WORKERS. Ele está claramente falando em benefícios trabalhistas.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Paulo Roberto de Almeida Acho que vc ainda não pegou o espírito da coisa Thiago D'Ávila: o trabalhador asiático que você diz ser "prejudicado" (em quê, exatamente?, explique) estaria em muito pior situação se não fosse pelo livre comércio, já pensou nisso? Gente rica que não trabalha, doentes, desempregados, etc, estariam EM MUITO PIOR SITUAÇÃO se não fosse pelo livre comércio. É muito difícil entender isto? Benefícios trabalhistas são uma convenção social, um contrato, uma regra; não tem nada a ver com livre comércio, que é, sempre foi, sempre será infinitamente melhor que todas as situações de mercantilismo, de comércio administrado, de restrições. Acho que qualquer pessoa medianamente aberta aos fenômenos de mercado pode perceber isso, não é?
Thiago D'Ávila
Thiago D'Ávila Paulo Roberto de Almeida, ok. Essas são as ideias nas quais vc acredita. Essas podem ser até as ideias comprováveis empiricamente. Essas podem ser as tão buscadas verdades universais.

O que eu estou apontando, pura e simplesmente, é que o comentaris
ta a quem você critica (ELE) está insinuando que o livre mercado não existe de fato (afirmação com a qual você inclusive concordou acima) e ELE está perguntando em relação a benefícios para trabalhadores, não a consumidores. EU estou dizendo apenas e tão somente que trabalhadores e consumidores são categorias distintas.EU não estou dizendo que livre mercado não possa trazer benefícios a trabalhadores e consumidores.

Isto tudo esclarecido, VOCÊ no fundo concorda com o comentarista a quem crítica, porque assim como ELE, você está dizendo que livre mercado não existe de fato, a situação real (de NÃO livre mercado apenas beneficia algumas empresas). E eu ouso supor que você também concorda com ele de que a atual situação (de NÃO livre mercado) prejudica trabalhadores.

Por fim, EU estou dizendo que sua crítica está errada (porque no fundo você concorda com ele), não a sua ideia.
Esse é o espírito da coisa. smile emoticon
Paulo Roberto de Almeida Meu caro Thiago D'Ávila, desculpe o atraso, mas volto a este debate importante. Acho que você ainda não capturou minha posição, mas independependente da minha posição, você não capturou o espírito da coisa que anda, ou seja, o princípio do livre comércio. Se eu estou concordando com o comentarista de que o livro comércio não existe, isso NÃO QUER DIZER que ele não seja possível, ou que ele é IMPOSSÍVEL. Basta que um país, unilateralmente (como aliás já fez a Inglaterra em 1846, até o início do século XX) decrete o livre comércio para si, para que ele comece a existir na prática. Ou que algum dia ele seja implementado como regra universal (o que ainda está longe), e que restrições, tarifas, normas e outras barreiras sejam a exceção, não a regra. A humanidade estará muito melhor, como estaria se a Declaração Universal dos DIREITOS DO HOMEM fosse implementada na prática, efetivamente (mas ela é NORMA UNIVERSAL, e EXISTE, e os países que se desviam dela são DESVIANTES, não a norma escrita ou não escrita, como é o mercantilismo atual do sistema multilateral de comércio, Gatt-OMC). Não é o livre comércio que prejudica trabalhadores, pois ele apenas desemprega setorialmente ALGUNS trabalhadores, beneficiando TODOS OS DEMAIS, como consumidores e como trabalhadores (e são categorias distintas apenas na teoria, pois na prática são exatamente as mesmas pessoas), pois o NÃO LIVRE COMÉRCIO prejudicará aqueles trabalhadores temporariamente protegidos, pois o setor, o ramo industrial, o país ficará isolado das pressões competitivas do resto mundo e DIMINUIRÁ A RENDA de todos os seus habitantes, não apenas os trabalhadores de um ou outro setor.  

Impeachment no Brasil: suspensao do Brasil do Mercosul! Limites da boçalidade - Editorial do Estadao

Os "limites da boçalidade" do Editorial do Estadão referem-se ao tresloucado e aloprado gesto de um diplomata do MST que se arvorou o direito de expedir circulares contendo seus alarmes idiotas contra um "golpe" supostamente em curso no Brasil.
Mas tem coisa mais grave, e aqui se aplicam os meus "limites da boçalidade", que se referem à uma potencial tentativa da chancelaria argentina de ameaçar levar o caso do processo de impeachment no Brasil ao Mercosul, que possui uma "cláusula democrática", que diga-se de passagem não foi aplicada nem pelo Brasil, nem pela Argentina quando suspenderam o Paraguai ilegalmente do bloco. São estas as minhas observações iniciais ao editorial do Estadão, que transcrevo antes do próprio.

O venerável representante do PIG, da mídia golpista que pretende apear do poder os "democratas" do lulopetismo, trata em editoria do boçal episódio das circulares alopradas que um diplomata do MST expediu para alertar o mundo que uma aventura golpista estava em curso no país. Não dou muita importância ao tresloucado gesto, pois se trata de uma espécie de canto do cisne dos neobolcheviques no poder. Mais grave, não para a chancelaria do Brasil, mas para a chancelaria argentina, de um governo que aparentemente agora tem a cabeça no lugar, que parta justamente da diplomacia portenha um alerta, e uma ameaça de que, se houver um impeachment constitucional, o Mercosul poderá suspender o Brasil do bloco (ou seja, deixar de fora 70% do bloco). Se não fosse ridícula tal assertiva, seria por demais patético que um bloquinho como é o Mercosul, hoje reduzido à mediocridade a que o conduziram as administrações esquizofrências dos Kirchner e do lulopetismo, resolvesse se contrapor a dispositivos constitucionais brasileiros, numa clara demonstração de intervenção nos assuntos internos do país. Entendo que a chancelaria brasileira -- eu disse a chancelaria -- saberá rechaçar tal intenção, pois o Mercosul não NADA A VER com nossas desavenças políticas internas. O ÚNICO GESTO que se espera de uma diplomacia digna desse nome é o rechaço completo, in limine, ab initio, determinante, de uma tal possibilidade. Os problemas internos do Mercosul NÃO PODEM e não devem ser tratados no Mercosul. É o mínimo que se espera de uma diplomacia digna!
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 25 de março de 2016

Limites da boçalidade

É próprio de uma democracia que cada cidadão seja livre para escolher suas posições políticas. Ir a uma manifestação pró-impeachment da presidente Dilma Rousseff, participar de um evento pró-governo, advogar por uma causa no seu círculo de amigos, simplesmente torcer reservadamente por um determinado desfecho da crise ou mesmo manter-se indiferente a tudo o que se refere ao mundo político – a liberdade política oferece muitas possibilidades ao cidadão. Essas possibilidades, no entanto, não incluem o uso dos órgãos públicos para fazer campanha político-partidária.
Uma ação assim seria evidente abuso, a atentar contra a isenção do Estado e a liberdade política dos demais cidadãos. Mas foi o que ocorreu na sexta-feira, dia 18 de março, quando o Ministério das Relações Exteriores (MRE) foi usado para enviar telegramas alertando para o risco de um golpe de Estado no País.
No dia em que estavam previstas manifestações contrárias ao impeachment de Dilma, o diplomata Milton Rondó Filho – que é ligado a Miguel Rossetto, ministro do Trabalho, e já assessorou o MST – quis dar sua contribuição à causa petista e enviou, por meio da Secretaria de Estado de Relações Exteriores do Itamaraty (Sere), mensagens de teor político-partidário a todas as embaixadas e representações do Brasil no exterior.
Expedida por volta do meio-dia, a primeira mensagem solicitava a designação de um servidor – de preferência, um diplomata – para se responsabilizar por “apoiar adequadamente” o diálogo entre o Itamaraty, a sociedade civil brasileira e organizações locais.
A segunda mensagem, enviada no meio da tarde daquele dia, retransmitia uma nota da Associação Brasileira de Organizações Não Governamentais (Abong), com frases do seguinte calibre: “É momento de resistência democrática! Não ao Golpe! Nossa luta continua!”.
Horas depois de enviada a segunda mensagem, a Secretaria-Geral do Itamaraty expediu um comunicado pedindo para “desconsiderar e tornar sem efeito as circulares telegráficas 100.752 e 100.755”. Mesmo assim, uma terceira mensagem de teor político-partidário foi enviada. O telegrama 100.757 reproduzia a Carta aos Movimentos Sociais da América Latina, denunciando um “processo reacionário que está em curso no País contra o Estado Democrático de Direito”. Posteriormente, o Itamaraty informou que Rondó Filho foi “admoestado” e está impedido de emitir novas circulares.
O episódio é grave. Além do evidente uso da máquina do Estado para fins político-partidários, os mentores da aloprada ação – seria bastante estranho achar que Rondó Filho atuou sozinho, sem nenhum respaldo do Palácio do Planalto ou do famoso assessor da Presidência da República para assuntos internacionais – rebaixam o Brasil no plano internacional, como se o País não fosse suficientemente capaz de resolver seus assuntos internos. A ironia é que esse tipo de atuação parta de quem, diante de graves violações de direitos humanos em outros países – Venezuela, por exemplo –, sempre diga que se deva deixar cada nação resolver sozinha seus problemas internos.
Além do episódio de patrulhamento ideológico e infantilismo internacional do funcionário do Itamaraty, a chanceler argentina, Susana Malcorra, declarou que o Mercosul pretende divulgar “o mais rápido possível” uma nota de apoio institucional ao governo brasileiro. Segundo a chanceler, em caso de impeachment da presidente Dilma Rousseff e em virtude da cláusula democrática do bloco, o Brasil poderia “eventualmente” ser temporariamente desvinculado do Mercosul. É sintomático do estágio em que se encontra o governo Dilma Rousseff que vá buscar apoio no inconsistente bloco sul-americano. Nessas circunstâncias, o desespero e a insânia dos lulopetistas em vias de perder preciosas boquinhas poderiam mesmo levá-los a pedir o apoio dos companheiros bolivarianos. Essa gente, afinal, tenta fazer do Brasil uma república bananeira sobre a qual possam reinar, boçais e soberanos.

Crise brasileira: a solucao via parlamentarismo - Senador Jose Serra

Um único defeito neste artigo, de resto muito razoável, e eu até diria bom, do Senador José Serra, em defesa do parlamentarismo: a ausência de definição para o sistema eleitoral, para o que ele admite necessidades, mas não indica em qual sentido (talvez não houvesse espaço).
Sou parlamentarista, mas relativamente pessimista quanto às suas chances num período inicial: ele representaria (não sei por quanto tempo) a exacerbação dos piores "ismos" da política brasileira: fisiologismo, prebendalismo, rentismo, nepotismo, patrimonialismo, além da corrupção no varejo (talvez melhor do que no atacado, estilo PT) e das possíveis fontes de instabilidade na coalizão governista, em vista da multiplicidade de partidos (o que pode ser combatido por cláusulas de barreira e da eliminação do Fundo Partidário).
Sou partidário do parlamentarismo, mas começaria por uma exigência básica, justamente: extinção completa do Fundo Partidário e de todo e qualquer financiamento público de campanhas, pois os partidos devem poder se sustentar por doações, de quaisquer entidades, desde que declaradas.
Dito isto, vamos ler o artigo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

RUMO A UM SISTEMA DE GOVERNO SUSTENTÁVEL
José Serra
O Estado de S. Paulo, 24 de março de 2016

Tenho sido um defensor ardoroso da mudança do sistema de governo no Brasil, do presidencialismo para o parlamentarismo. Creio que a atual crise evidencia mais do que nunca a necessidade dessa mudança. Minha proposta, semelhante à de outros parlamentares, é que o novo sistema seja implantado a partir das eleições de 2018. Até lá, haveria uma fase de transição, na qual seriam promovidas mudanças no sistema eleitoral, no sentido de diminuir a distância entre representantes e representados, e na administração pública, no sentido de sua maior profissionalização.

A ideia de iniciar agora o processo de mudança do sistema político tem sofrido cinco objeções. A primeira considera que implantar o parlamentarismo durante o mandato da presidente Dilma Roussef equivaleria a um golpe, semelhante ao que aconteceu em 1961. Para vencer a resistência dos chefes militares a que o vice-presidente João Goulart assumisse o cargo após a renúncia de Jânio Quadros, o Congresso votou uma emenda parlamentarista. Graças a ela, Jango tornou-se presidente, mas com poderes reduzidos, entregando a chefia do governo a um primeiro-ministro aprovado pela Câmara. Note-se que apesar disso ele teve força suficiente para derrubar o novo sistema através de um plebiscito, em janeiro de 1963.

Voltando ao presente e à primeira objeção, é preciso esclarecer que não há nem houve proposta de emenda constitucional que carregasse a tese do parlamentarismo já. Muito menos com Dilma tornando-se o Jango do século XXI. Se alguma ideia esteve por trás da circulação daquela tese nos bastidores da política, não foi de retirar poderes da atual presidente, mas de evitar seu impeachment – o qual parece cada vez menos evitável.

A segunda objeção sustenta que o parlamentarismo, mesmo se adotado a partir de 2019, representaria um golpe. Isso porque o povo não mais escolheria o chefe do governo. Pior, o Congresso, que não é bem visto pela população, ganharia um poder imenso. Lembrando que em todos os países desenvolvidos, exceto os Estados Unidos, prevalece o sistema parlamentarista, tal objeção é derrotista e atrasada: implica que seremos sempre prisioneiros do subdesenvolvimento, destituídos de uma condição necessária para progresso econômico-social a longo prazo. Premissa amarga e absurda.

Vale sublinhar: no modelo em discussão (ainda incipiente) no Congresso, o povo continuaria a eleger por voto direto o presidente da República, que teria mandato fixo e seria o chefe de Estado, com importantes poderes de representar a Nação, defender sua soberania e seus valores democráticos, além de servir de mediador nos conflitos entre os poderes Legislativo e Executivo. A ele caberia também a chefia das Forças Armadas, a indicação de embaixadores e dos membros dos tribunais superiores.

Ao primeiro ministro, indicado pelo presidente da República, caberia a tarefa de governar, sem mandato fixo, nomeando e chefiando o gabinete de ministros que, necessariamente, deve dispor de maioria parlamentar que apoie o seu programa de governo. Quando o governo vai mal e/ou perde o apoio dessa maioria, pode ser trocado. Assume um novo primeiro ministro, que deverá dispor do apoio de uma nova maioria. Como já escrevi nesta coluna, citando a primeira ministra alemã Angela Merkel: no presidencialismo a demissão do chefe de governo significa crise, no parlamentarismo, solução.

A alegação de que o parlamentarismo não serve porque o Congresso passaria a ter muito poder também não se sustenta. Ele já tem muito poder hoje. Pode destituir um presidente, derrubar vetos presidenciais, aprovar ou reprovar emendas constitucionais, leis complementares e ordinárias. Os projetos de lei do governo chegam ao Congresso via Câmara, que delibera a respeito e os envia ao Senado. Se este fizer modificações o projeto retorna à Câmara, que dá a palavra final do Legislativo. Por isso ter maioria na Câmara é essencial para que o presidente consiga governar. Muitos parlamentares barganham individualmente com o Executivo a formação de maioria em cada votação. Esse tipo de barganha degrada o Executivo e o Legislativo. Mas, se o presidente perde maioria na Câmara, o resultado é impasse, turbulência, risco de crise institucional.

Já no parlamentarismo, os destinos do Executivo e da maioria da Câmara são indissociáveis. Se a Câmara votar contra projetos importantes do governo, pode derrubar o primeiro-ministro e seu gabinete. No entanto, se a Câmara não conseguir formar uma nova maioria que dê sustentação a um novo governo, o presidente da República pode dissolvê-la, convocando eleições antes do tempo. Esse ritual todo torna o voto dos deputados mais responsável e tende a manter a maioria da Câmara afinada com o Executivo, deixando o governo funcionar.

A terceira objeção vem de pessoas que se declaram parlamentaristas, mas reclamam da inexistência de “condições prévias”, a saber, as reformas eleitoral e partidária. Ora, tais condições são igualmente fundamentais no atual sistema presidencialista. Por acaso não estamos vendo – e sofrendo – os estragos causados pela inconsistência dos partidos e as falhas do sistema eleitoral? Ao contrário de ser inviabilizada pela falta de reformas, a adoção do parlamentarismo pode ser o empurrão que falta para destravá-las.

Há também o argumento – não propriamente objeção – de que nada pode ser feito em matéria de parlamentarismo sem uma consulta à população, via plebiscito ou, principalmente, referendum. Esse é um tema que, sem dúvida, merece consideração, e a cujo respeito deve se manifestar, além do Congresso, o Supremo Tribunal Federal.

Por fim, uma quinta objeção ao parlamentarismo envolve um belo non sequitur, ou um primor de falácia lógica: não poderíamos discutir mudanças institucionais tão importantes num momento de crise aguda. Mas por que cargas d’água pensaríamos nessas mudanças se as instituições estivessem funcionando a contento, a economia crescendo e a sociedade confiante nas suas perspectivas de trabalho e bem-estar? Na vida das nações bem sucedidas, em geral se deu o oposto: as crises criaram a oportunidade de mudanças que abriram caminho para o desenvolvimento. É o que desejo para o Brasil neste momento.

SENADOR DA REPÚBLICA, EX-PREFEITO E EX-GOVERNADOR DE SÃO PAULO
Acompanhe novos artigos no meu site: http://www.joseserra.com.br