Brazil's Workers Party shifts to the right on eve of elections

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Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva, left, leader of the Workers Party geois populist leader Leonel Brizola after municipal elections last November Striking railworkers outside Rio de Janeiro in early 1986 Send to: 3435 Army, #308, San Francisco, CA 94110 18 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1989 (Second of a two-part series)

A deepening economic crisis, a militant wave of strikes (including a general strike last March), and an upsurge in the fight of workers and peasants to defend their rights all form the backdrop to the November presidential elections in Brazil. In last month's issue of Socialist Action, the economic crisis, the rise of the Workers Party (PT), and the PT's administration of Brazil's largest city was outlined. In this issue, the PT's electoral program and campaign will be examined.

Nearly one year ago, the Workers Party (PT) was swept to power in many Brazilian cities, winning the mayoralty in Sao Paulo and elsewhere, including interior cities that had traditionally voted for right-wing candidates.

Public opinion polls put Luis Inacio da Silva ("Lula"), a popular trade union leader and PT presidential candidate, at the top of the heap along with another "left" candidate, Leonel Brizola, a leading bourgeois-nationalist figure and long-time oppositionist to the former military dictatorship. The Wall Street Journal warned of a "leftward lurch" in Brazil.

But now, less than one year later, the PT has plunged dramatically in the polls. One candidate from the right wing, Fernando Collor de Mello, has risen to the top of the polis, taking advantage of the crisis of the main capitalist parties and the growing disillusionment with the PT. What happened?

The PT leadership attributes the rise of Collor de Mello to his co-opting of the "corruption" issue. In an article in the Sept. 13, 1989, issue of the radical newsweekly The Guardian, Maria Helena Moreira Alves writes of how "this basically right-wing politician was carried to the top of the opinion polls on the banner of a key left issue."

The article is entitled "Left's star sinks in Brazil"-a reference to the drop of the PT in the polls. Moreira Alves is a founder of the PT and is a professor of political economy at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

Leading bourgeois candidate

Fernando Collor de Mello is the young former governor of Alagoas, Brazil's second smallest state. His party, the PRN (National Reconstruction Party), was founded only in February. He advocates foreign aid to save the Amazon, and capitalism and foreign investment to save Brazil's sinking economy.

Until recently, he was hardly known even inside Brazil. But he is, in many respects, a creation of the powerful Globo television network, which has given generous time to his campaign and with which his family has strong economic ties. He has been portrayed as a JFK type, handsome and athletic.

His program, as The New York Times put it, calls for a "clean house on a national level, dismissing millions of civil servants, jailing corrupt officials, and selling inefficient state industries to the private sector." But it is the dismissals and sales that he is most interested in. The "millions" will be comprised mostly of working-class government workers. And Agencia Jis (PT), and bourselling the state industries will help his backers—the Brazilian ruling class-gain more direct control of the economy.

Collor de Mello told interviewers from O Estado de Sao Paulo, the newspaper of Sao Paulo industrialists, that if elected he is "going to establish the minimum conditions so that finally there is capitalism in Brazil."

The PT backtracks While Collor de Mello's candidacy has been on the rise, the PT's has been sinking. There is widespread disillusionment among the workers who voted for the PT last fall.

The PT leadership, radically breaking with the party's past positions, has chosen to play the role of administering the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) austerity measures in the cities. The PT's 36 mayors and over 1000 1 6 months for $3.

State city council members-with only a few exceptions-agreed to pay the municipalities' share of Brazil's foreign debt. (The national government apportions part of the debt to the municipalities as a means of strangling them.)

The PT leadership backed off from forming a common front of mayors to repudiate the payment of the imperialist debt. To meet their debt "obligations," the mayors were thus compelled to hike prices for public services and lay off thousands of city workers. [For a more detailed account of the PT's record in office, see September 1989 Socialist Action.] But the PT leadership's decision to "responsibly" administer the cities is just one facet of its sharp retreat from the PT's historic program of mass struggle and working-class political independence.

In October of 1988, for example, Brazil adopted a new bourgeois constitution that codified the maintenance of the major institutions of the capitalist state, including the armed forces. The PT leadership, after voting against the constitution in the Constituent Assembly, ended up signing it (as did all the other political parties).

After the passage of the constitution, Brazil faced a tremendous upsurge in the class struggle. The strike wave hit, the Volta Redonda massacre took place, the PI won the mayoralties. Throughout the spring, with the 35-million strong general strike of May 1415 and other struggles, the Brazilian workers and peasants did not let up.

But the PT leadership not only failed to centralize and deepen these struggles; it actively opposed the general strike, arguing for the need to "show restraint" in the face of the growing assault on the workers by the Sarney government and the bosses. Top PT leaders called on the workers to "defend the democratic opening" and to focus their attention on the upcoming presidential elections. Lula was intent on appearing I l one year for $t "presidential."

It was only after the rank-and-file metalworkers shouted down and overruled the PT leaders at the SBC Corp. on May 2-the first time this occurred-that the PT leadership agreed to support the May 14-15 general strike organized by the CUT (Unified Workers Federation).

Also breaking with its past positions, the PT's parliamentary fraction voted to approve a reactionary law on wages. The law did not include an escalator clause to keep wages apace with the increase in the cost of living. (The yearly rate of inflation is 1500 percent.) The law also established a minimum wage below the level set by the DIEESE institute of statistics.

Major programmatic retreat

It is in relation to the Nov. 15 national elections, however, that the PT leadership's break with the party's working-class program has been the deepest.

At its meeting in April, the National Directorate of the PT decided it had to "broaden its alliances" if Lula was to win the presidential elections. It therefore voted to form an electoral bloc with petty-bourgeois and splinter bourgeois parties to compete in the Nov. 15 elections.

The bloc, which was named the Brazil Popular Front, agreed to run Lula as its presidential candidate. It was formed by four parties: the PT, the PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil, a Maoist split from the Moscow-oriented Brazilian Communist Party), the PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party), and the PV (Green Party).

The 13-point program of the Brazil Popular Front was submitted by the PT leadership. (It was later ratified, with only minor amendments, by the PT's 6th National Convention in June.) The central focus of the document is to "democratize the [capitalist] state and society" within the framework of the new constitution. It marks a major reversal of many of the PT's traditional positions.

Whereas the PT once called for cancellation of Brazil's crushing foreign debt—at $120 billion the world's largest—the PT now calls for negotiations with the IMF to work out an agreement on a "suspension of payments." This is to be followed by an "audit to verify the legitimacy of the existing debt."

The PT's previous position was that the debt must be rejected wholly at all levels, and that the masses of Brazilian workers and peasants-and their allies internationallymust be organized politically to fight the debt. Instead, the PT's new program now calls for "organizing an international conference of debtor nations to adopt a common course of action." Similar calls have been issued by numerous capitalist politicians in the semi-colonial countries for many years.

The PT also dropped its call for the nationalization of the banks under workers' control.

Retreats on land and bread The program of the Brazil Popular Front (continued on next page)

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