By:
Andréa Cristina Trentini, Lawyer OAB/SC 23071 and legal consultant of the company National VOX.
Sabrina Nicolazzi, a Master in Political Sociology – UFSC
Democracy is the most widespread and accepted form of government in most societies today. In addition to the promotion of universal rights proclaimed since at least the French Revolution in the 18th century, democracy breathes respect for these rights. Thus, the democratic regime understands the Law as a science and cultural phenomenon to rightly safeguard the guarantees inherent to the regime.
Democracy has several ways of instrumentalizing itself, knowing more recently its representative expression in which the people assert their sovereign will through periodic elections of their representatives.
Along with the American Declaration of Independence (1776), which conquered the independence of the thirteen colonies of the United States of America, the Universal Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights, proclaimed in the French Revolution (1789), these two marks open the foundations for the conception of democracy we see today. All these events contributed to the enunciation that the human person is endowed with rights and duties influencing the main constitutions of the modern world.
However, the fight for human rights already had a long history. Some of the human rights were conquered in England from the 16th century, as an example we can cite the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) and in 1689 the expressive Bill of Rights document that declared the superiority of the law in relation to the King. This document had an important meaning for the expansion of the rights of the nascent bourgeoisie and subsequent industrial revolution because the powers were no longer in the hands of the monarchs but also of the people. In the 20th century, we have the expression of the protection and promotion of human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations (UN) in 1947.
All these letters bring with them principles of freedom, equality, rights of free expression, initiative, property, dignity among other precepts that are inherent in modern democracy. In addition to this technology has brought us tools that enable us to have a political expression to make the popular will reach political institutions. The use of so-called media and social networks are an example of technology that can be used for mobilization and political participation in a democratic context.
Brazil and Tunisia: dichotomies in the political use of social networks
Brazil is a country that exercises its democratic rightful title. In his 1988 Constitutional Charter, he contemplates the fundamental guarantees and rights based on the promotion and protection of human rights, inspired as well as most modern constitutions, in the ideals of the French Revolution. Today it is considered the sixth largest world economy and competes in the international market with developed countries in virtually equal terms. However, even though it is a democratic state of law, Brazil has numerous economic and social inequalities, which coexist with a series of freedoms achieved by the exercise of democracy.
From another perspective we have Tunisia, a small country located in North Africa that became independent in 1956 from France and which until recently was run by a president who spent 23 years in power. This country has had its historical evolution marked by a political development that has oscillated between a government that limits freedoms and liberalizations of a democratic nature. Today, this country has experienced a revolution that began with the indignation and subsequent immolation of a marketer, a fruit seller after being forbidden by police officers from working on the streets. This was the initial milestone of a series of movements known as the Arab Spring that took over several countries between the Middle East and Africa and that caused the fall of rulers who had been in power for many years and who restricted their nation's civil liberties from 2010.
In this context, where are the similarities and differences between Brazil and Tunisia? We will initially have to deal with the issue of using social networks for political mobilization and its relationship with democracy.
The most recently used social networks are facebook, twitter and youtube and they have a range that does not see borders in relation to communication. They are open, widely public in democratic countries and in countries where the exercise of democracy is not done, they have state restrictions, the most well-known case is China. That is, because it is a vehicle of freedom of expression in societies where the State limits the life of its citizen these networks are quite limited.
Returning to the Arab Spring, what was seen was a mobilization through social networks for the outbreak of movements in favor of the pursuit of social and political rights. The use of social networks also allowed other countries to have access to what was happening there, since their rulers repatriated foreign journalists and only issued official reports of what was happening covering up information. Some countries such as Libya have banned Internet access and the demonstration of those peoples has attracted the attention of the international community and the vain attempt to stabilize the domino effect of this revolution, rather than slow down, has accelerated the movement that has spread across several countries.
The relevant fact is the influence of today's information society and its connection to the use of digital technology capable of promoting changes that value the human being.
Brazil knows the Internet, is unaware of its power and reach because it does not invest enough in education or social programs aimed at intellectual promotion that properly guide its use and resources.
Now with cheap energy, Brazilian government policy, to attract investors, and cover almost every territory, the people here enjoy knowing social networks without even knowing how to use them. A superficial analogy is made and the citizens of democracy are compared to the first inhabitants of this land (human material) the current ipads and iphones to the old mirrors (or any spice brought by the 16th century explorers). .
From another band, Brazilians hand their gold to the Democratic State of Law, through taxes in return receive from it internet access (spiciaries) despite not even receiving the basics of assistance to individual protection, access to knowledge.
In short: the Brazilian scenario is democratic and capitalist. In Brazil, there is e-gov and e-democracy and everything else that takes all the gold from the working citizens and leaves only mirrors.
Capitalist Brazil provides for the legal aspect, among the objectives of the Federal Constitution, the express guarantee of the democratic government, of national development (cf/88 art. 3, II), and on the international scene, art. 4 of the same diploma, establishes the principles that Brazil governs its international relations, including, II – prevalence of human rights; IX – cooperation between peoples for the progress of humanity.
Thus, digital law moves towards a relationship with the rights of solidarity, diffuse and collective (3rd dimension), economic development (art. 170 CF/88), rational management of natural resources and right to the ecologically balanced environment (art. 225 CF/88); having as scope the validation of the dignity of the human person (cf. 88, 1st, III) and fundamental rights (art. 5th CF/88), all interconnected to knowledge engineering.
Knowledge engineering includes the information society, the knowledge economy, e-commerce, philosophy ontology-branch, in short, the interdisciplinarity of various sciences made available to the researcher to construct new concepts considering the economic and political dynamics of society, to promote citizenship.
The fact is that without education, individual guarantees and universal human rights are of no use, because the people have no knowledge to understand their scope.
Contrary to what has been successfully proven in countries where the population receives education, despite having their private freedoms due to dictatorial regimes.
A controversial case of internal policy is about the R$ 24 billion real collected with taxes that will be dammed at the Belo Monte/AM plant, for the construction of the largest hydroelectric plant in the world, which will use only 1/3 of its capacity.
There was a Facebook attempt to spread a campaign, without much expression, contrary to the allocation of this amount and to disclose the cost/benefit ratio of the use of public money.
It is concluded that the Brazilian has no notion of the power of digital media, now the current historical moment, the so-called digital era and the democracy of a social state of law, computerized, which bears the banner of e-democracy, bet on a policy with an investment of this amount and simply go unnoticed by society, is at least strange. That is, basic education is lacking and, above all, education for the greater knowledge of institutions and mechanisms of political participation, even in a representative democracy based almost exclusively on voting.
Some believe in manipulation of open television channels; others justify such strangeness linked to the lack of organization of intellectuals, but it is strange, even strange for the historic Spring of
Prague, or if you prefer to the extinct social communism of 1968 reproduced now in Tunisia.
Brazil is far from achieving the ideal of national development, far from having its Spring, but a fact is proven: the influence of social networks in the everyday life of humanity and the strength of the information society. The effect was the greatest political achievement because it overthrew dictatorial and ruling regimes that occupied the positions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya respectively at 23, 30 and 42 years, proving the strength of social networks today, but this power exists, because there is associated with education, education, knowledge, human domination of the interdisciplinary sciences of knowledge engineering.
If not, facebook and social networks will be just the digital version of a journal of a teenage society that changed the 4 or 10 color Bic pen and paper for modern talent’s, with no expectations of living in a country that respects its citizens and their legal guarantees, as in Brazil.
