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Former Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has criticized President Michel Temer's plan to sell Eletrobras, the country’s largest, publicly-controlled power company.
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The Temer-controlled Mining and Energy Ministry notified Electrobras of the plan and announced that it intends to deliver the proposal to the Temer administration, which continues to oversee mass privatization, arguing the move would make the company “more competitive and agile.”
“I must prove to these folks,” Lula said, "that we don't have to sell Eletrobras. What we have to do is hang our heads in shame and work because this country can be much better.”
Speaking in Sergipe state as part of his “Caravan of Hope” tour, the former leftist president argued that Electrobras should remain publicly owned — currently, the Brazilian government owns just over 56 percent of its shares.
Lula declared that “if the justice department allows him” to participate as a presidential candidate in 2018, he will “win and do more,” including protecting state-run services.
“We will not rest until the people's dignity is restored,” he added.
Former President Dilma Rousseff took to Twitter to denounce the move, "Selling Eletrobras is giving up energy security. As happened in 2001, in the FHC (Fernando Henrique Cardoso) government, it means leaving the country subject to blackouts."
She continued, "The result is only one: the consumer will pay a stratospheric light bill for energy that will not have guaranteed supply."
Rousseff was impeached in a parliamentary coup in August 2016, paving the way for the senate-imposed government of Temer and its neoliberal policies. At the beginning of the Lula administration, Rousseff headed the ministry between 2003 and 2005.
Eletrobras is the biggest electricity utility company in Latin America and the tenth biggest in the world. Through its subsidiaries, it owns 40 percent of Brazil's generation capacity, most of it from hydroelectric power plants, and it controls 69 percent of the country's electricity distribution. The company was set up by the left leaning president, Joao Goulart, in 1962. The Brazilian state currently owns, directly and indirectly, just over 56 percent of its shares. The rest are traded on the Sao Paulo stock exchange, as well as on the New York and Madrid stock exchanges.
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Critics immediately denounced the ministry's move as another part of the government's attempt to tackle its public spending deficit of almost US$50 billion by cutting social welfare and privatizing public assets. The leader of the opposition Workers' Party, or PT, in the senate, Lindbergh Farias, denounced the sale of Eletrobras as "a crime against the nation."
The Ministry of Energy has not said how much of the government's stake it wants to sell. It did say the sale would follow the pattern set in selling state shares in Brazil's leading aircraft manufacturer, Embraer, and the iron mining giant, Vale. It insisted the government would retain some shares and a power of veto over strategic decisions.
According to the ministry, the problems at Eletrobras result from 15 years of inefficiency, and "have cost society almost a quarter of a trillion dollars."
After winning a vote in Congress early this month to block corruption charges against him, Brazil's president, Michel Temer, promised to accelerate his program of reforms. These include reductions in labor and pension rights, cuts to anti-poverty programs, and the rolling back of land rights for Brazil's Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities.
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