Point of order

Collor de Mello had been president since the beginning of 1990. It was “National Water Day” (Mar 22, 1991). A group of professionals from all over Brazil arranged to go to Brasília because there would be a session of the Chamber of Deputies dedicated to the sanitation sector (potable water, sanitary sewage, stormwater drainage, garbage collection and final disposal, and vector control).

Some newly sworn-in deputies, from all over Brazil, were from the sector. I remember Junot (from the former SANERJ, which, when merged with CEDAG and ESAG, became CEDAE-RJ), elected by PDT-RJ. He was a great promoter of that meeting.

Everyone who entered the room was duly identified, searched, signed an attendance list, and the simple mortals of the people were sent to the so-called “gallery” and warned that everything was being recorded.

The session was chaired by deputy Sérgio Arouca, trained in medicine and former president of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, FIOCRUZ, besides being a well-known national leader of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party, linked to Moscow), the famous “big party”.

The PCB/PPS, the PDT (Brizola’s), the PSB (Arraes’s), the PCdoB (a Leninist dissidence from the PCB), the still-new PT (“stimulated” by General Golbery with the Catholic Church to counter Brizola), and the recently created PSDB (with Covas and FHC), made up part of the so-called “left” in Brazil.

The new subject of the moment was the “destatization of water, sewage and garbage services”, a theme that had begun to appear between the lines.

The plenary was not full, but it was, let us say, with more than half the seats occupied. The place intended for the audience was also more than 2/3 full. Not bad for those who wanted to “mark a position” and demonstrate the importance of the sector.

Once the session began, after the usual blah-blah-blahs, a representative of the PT, from São Paulo, signed up to speak and began to make a catilinary speech against “privatizing public services”, etc. and so on.

However, his argument, instead of, for example, questioning the privatization of natural monopolies, followed a prejudiced bias, that private enterprise would be dishonest while so-called public employees would be honest, that state administration would be more correct, that the private sector would only aim for profit, etc. and so on, and on it went, when a colleague from the audience, where we were, began wanting to speak, to make an aside, but Arouca paid him no attention.

At a certain point, the colleague shouted very loudly “POINT of ORDER”.

Anyone who has done even a minimum of student politics (in those environments, more than half had) knows that, when someone shouts that, custom says it is better to hear what the colleague wants to say. That is what Arouca did: he interrupted the speaker and opened the aside microphone to the colleague from the audience, who went there (it seems it is no longer like that, or not always like that, but that day it was).

Arriving at the microphone, the colleague said more or less the following:

“_ I entered here and was identified, therefore my presence is traceable; if I listen silently, it seems I agreed. I ask the speaker: I was a civil servant, hired through public examination, twice; today I am in private enterprise. From what the colleague says, I was honest twice, but I am no longer; if I become a civil servant again, do I become honest again?”

The speaker (the one from PT-SP) became furious, shouting at Arouca,

“_ this is not a point of order, cut off his microphone”.

Arouca must not have liked the way he was addressed, or else he took the opportunity to show that the PCB, in matters of intelligent argumentation, was above the other “left-wing” parties, and fired back;

“_ but the colleague from the audience is right! The military, the police, the DOPS employees, are also public employees and all of us here have many reservations about how the State acted for years. It seems that you forgot that”.

Despite a few little laughs, a deadly silence fell over the “audience” and the “plenary”, and total embarrassment for the speaker, still at the podium, who kept stammering until his time ended, unable to get back on track...

From then on, the speeches were merely protocol, praising the sector “that prevents people from getting sick, the selfless workers of garbage, sewage, the undergrounds that give us hygiene and well-being, blah-blah-blah...”

That day, no speaker touched the subject again, but it seems that it was there that Brazilian sanitation began to be destatized.

At the end of the session, the colleague of the “point of order” practically left on the shoulders of the crowd from the private entities present there. Not because they wanted to “privatize” or “destatize”. But because he had contested the insults. For private companies, it makes no difference, providing services to the concessionaire whether private or state-owned. Only the innocent do not realize this.

Curiously, the first sanitation privatization in Brazil was in the municipality of Ribeirão Preto (SP), in 1995 (sewage), with a PT mayor. Then came Niterói, in 1997, with a PDT mayor. The same happened in other countries. Could it be that the discourse is one thing, and the action another? Many say: “_ just as well”.

And a little monopoly, to call one’s own, does no harm to anyone, does it?

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written in 2018 R2025 Sep 02 Re, 5,018 characters.