Topic: Political reform and democracy

How do you create a political system structured in popular sovereignty? Today we have a democracy without the voice of the people, a system in which citizenship does not apply to power. Reform means a reform of power and not just of the electoral system.

We work towards widespread reform to change the way of doing politics and exercising power in Brazil. This confronts under-representation of women, black people, indigenous peoples, workers, and LGBT+ in positions of power. Today power is based among the white, male, wealthy, hetero, and the Christian, who do not represent the majority of the Brazilian people.

Political reform demands construction of popular power and sovereignty, and must be structured in five dimensions:

1. The strengthening of direct democracy, with the people exercising power, for true democracy must be based on direct democracy;
2. The strengthening of participatory democracy, through councils, conferences and public hearings, with the population participating in defining public policy;
3. The improvement of representative democracy, confronting under-representation, strengthening the democratization of the parties and endowing the parliament with instruments of direct and participatory democracy;
4. democratization of the media, seeking the balance, as provided in the Constitution, of private, state and public media. Communication needs to reflect the diversity of society’s thoughts, not just a portion;
5. and the democratization of the justice system, which today resembles a caste system. The justice system must be plural, as it is our society, and cannot serve as an instrument of political dispute.

In this endeavor, we prioritize participation in spaces of articulation of civil society. Since 2005, we have participated in the Platform for Social Movements for the Reform of the Political System, an articulation of various organizations, movements, forums and collectives that question Brazilian democracy, the traditional way of doing politics and the impediments to the right of society to participate in public decisions. The objective of the Platform is to formulate proposals for a new political system, to mobilize society for debate, and to act in the discussions held in the National Congress. Together with the Platform we are committed to formulating a sixth dimension, which is to confront the weight of economic power in political decisions.