(…) Just as no one will forget this memorable campaign, no one will forget the names of these traitors to the national will, who, with their absence, allowed the minority to defeat the majority so that Brazilians could not once again be masters of the their fate (at the end of my book, I publish their names).
Outside, after two in the morning, a few hundred citizens were still waiting for the impossible, a reversal of the result that no one wanted.
It was a day that seemed like an eternity, speeches and more speeches, postponing the decision _ endless 17 hours of a historic session, so that at the end the Brazilian people would know that they continued to be protected, without rights (it would still take another 5 years before we could vote for president and, by the irony of fate, the chosen one ended up being Fernando Collor, who was from the PDS, the dictatorship party that defeated the amendment).
(…) “Yes, for the good of Brazil”, “Yes, for freedom”, “Yes, for national sovereignty”, completed the opposition parliamentarians when announcing their votes. State by state, the “yes” vote was always ahead of the “no”, but the victory was nothing more than an illusion: the absent supporters, in the dead of night, were defining the result. The pedestrians who showed up said “no” quietly, embarrassed. Some don’t even deign to go to the microphone. They whisper their votes right there from the back of the plenary.
(…) “Your Excellency, please stand up”, almost begged the president of the Senate, Moacir Dalla, who led the session, when a PDS deputy, Afrísio Vieira Lima, hid behind colleagues to mumble “no ” away from the microphones.
(…) Even the rumors about threats from “Nini” disappeared in the dawn of shame and affront, with some saying to the other, without having to say anything, just with their eyes: “Yes, this time it didn’t work…! ” But let no one think that this scene will be repeated with impunity. A Nation that rose up in so few months of campaigning, no longer squats. No matter how dark the dawn is, as a poet once said, the closer you are to the light of a new day.
