Author: Ives Gandra Martins

Source: Jornal do Brasil - RJ - 09/11/2009

Recently, the president of the BNDES, Luciano Coutinho, declared that if the Brazilian government does not cut its costing expenses, Brazil's growth will be sacrificed in the coming years.

In my recent book A brief theory of power (Ed. Revista dos Tribunais, 2009), along the same lines that Brazil has exaggerated in the self-bestowed benefits to the government at the expense of society, so there is very little left for investment in what is meant for a bloated and sclerotic bureaucracy.

Just check what is earmarked for exclusive payment to the official active and inactive labor force in the 2010 budget (around R $ 160 billion) against just over R $ 10 billion for Bolsa Família. PAC is allocated R $ 23 billion.

In the aforementioned book, I focus more on the figure of those in power than on the philosophical currents - who take care of the State, laws and forms of government - and I try to demonstrate that, in all historical periods and geographical spaces, the search for the power for those who desire it rarely aims to serve the people, but rather to enjoy the perks that power offers. Not without reason, Racine, in her play Thebes, when Creon kills his two sons to be king, puts in his mouth the phrase that the happiness of being a father does not make anyone envious, because he is common, but the throne is a good of which the heavens are mean. The same conclusion reached Rotrou, in Innocent Fidelity, when he says that "all crimes are beautiful when the throne is the price".

In dictatorships, the holder of power does not need to justify the appropriation of whatever he wants, because he has no opposition.

In democracies, however, what differs from dictatorships is that they have opposition and the drafting of the law has to be negotiated, serving as authorization for command, but also as a limit to the exercise of power.

The criticisms of abuse that the opposition always makes change when it takes power, passing the situation prior to the criticism, with the same virulence previously directed at it, since the search for power is the only objective and not that of serving, which when it occurs and it gives as a mere side effect of the holding of power.

Carl Schmitt when he understood, through his theory of oppositions, that the economy opposes the useful to the useless, the moral, the good to the evil, the aesthetic, the beautiful to the ugly, but politics only opposes the friend to the enemy, gives the dimension well of what is the essence of power.

It is something to be enjoyed by whoever owns it. For this reason, in democracies, campaigns are at a very low level worldwide.

Machiavelli, in Principe, can have his theory of power summarized as follows: “The ruler is good, if he maintains power, even if badly.

It is bad for the government to lose it, even if it is good ”.

For this reason, it is that history has shown a constant search for limiting the powers of its holders by the supreme texts, which, however, whenever its holder has strength does not respect it. Even traditional cultures, in the 20th century, had dictatorships like Germany and Italy, because whoever has the power seeks only to perpetuate themselves in it.

In the midst of a campaign for the presidency in 2010, President Lula, in the struggle to elect his candidate, has not spared criticism of those who exercise control functions such as the Court of Auditors, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Judiciary and supervisory bodies, which, in the exercise of their duty, they detect irregularities, overpricing and overpricing in many of their works. To the evidence, President Lula is not right.

Although it is difficult to change human nature in the struggle for power, we have very little human life on the planet to reach the point of losing hope that one day politicians will have the sole purpose of serving society and not using it.

The opposition's abuse criticisms change when it takes charge
 

Ives Gandra Martins
LAW PROFESSOR AND WRITER