Wave of Terror Against Brazil's Workers Party Precedes WSF

By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) - The murder in January of Mayor Celso Daniel, one of the most prominent leaders of Brazil's Workers Party (PT), provided further evidence of a campaign of terror against the leftist party, which stands a real chance of winning the presidency in October.

The president of the PT, parliamentary Deputy José Dirceu, complained of a ''conspiracy'' against the party, and said the murder of Daniel - the mayor of Santo André, an industrial suburb of 650,000 near Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city - was a ''political crime.'' Another PT leader, Antonio da Costa Santos, the mayor of Campinas, another of Brazil's largest cities, was murdered on Sep 10. The police have not yet identified the perpetrators of that crime.

In addition, four other attempts on the lives of PT mayors and city councillors have been reported in the past three months in the state of Sao Paulo.

The mayor of Embú, Geraldo Cruz, was slightly injured when a bomb went off in his home, while his secretary was wounded in a similar attack.

Several armed, hooded men broke into the estate of the mayor of Ribeirao Corrente, Airton Luiz Montagner, when he was not home.

Alerted by a call to his cell-phone from his household staff, he called the police.

The homes and cars of other local authorities belonging to the PT in the state of Sao Paulo were also targeted in shooting incidents.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Brazilian Revolutionary Action Front (FARB) has sent death threats by mail and e-mail to dozens of PT mayors and parliamentarians in the past two months.

''We cannot believe in coincidences,'' said Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, honorary president of the PT and one of the favourite candidates for the October 2002 presidential elections, with nearly 30 percent ratings in the polls.

Lula agreed with Dirceu that the murder of Daniel, whose body was found on Jan 20, with 18 bullet holes in the back and the face, was politically motivated and premeditated.

However, most police investigators say Daniel was kidnapped by common criminals who planned to ask for ransom.

In a politically motivated assassination, the victim is killed immediately, and not held for 24 hours, as occurred in the case of Daniel, argue police with experience in such crimes, like José Vicente da Silva, a former Sao Paulo secretary of public security who works today as a researcher for a non-governmental organisation.

Daniel had dinner with a friend at a Sao Paulo restaurant on Jan 18. On his way home to Santo André, around 20 kms away, the car in which he was riding, driven by a friend, was chased down and shot at by a group of gunmen travelling in two vehicles.

But only the mayor was carried off by the armed men. His body was found two days later in Juquitiba, 70 kms from Sao Paulo, near a highway that runs south of the city.

The theory that the murder was committed by common criminals does not explain the kidnappers' failure to ask for ransom.

Furthermore, the recent spate of attacks on the PT clearly indicates - according to some analysts - that the party itself is being targeted.

Brazil's main leftist party made spectacular progress in the municipal elections of 2000, especially in the state of Sao Paulo, where it won the office of mayor in most of the large cities, including the state capital, home to 10.4 million, and Guarulhos and Campinas, cities of over one million.

In the elections, Daniel was reelected mayor of Santo André, one of Brazil's industrial hubs, garnering 70 percent of the vote.

Daniel's performance as mayor was widely respected, and his popularity went far beyond his party. He enjoyed the backing of 18 of Santo Andre's 21 city councillors.

Since his death, the city feels ''orphaned,'' Santo Andre's acting secretary of culture, Alexandre Takara, told IPS.

Mayor Daniel also exercised strong leadership in the ABC region made up of suburbs where Sao Paulo's metallurgical industry, especially car-makers, was concentrated in the past.

The ABC region is currently undergoing a transformation to a service economy, due to the migration of industry to the interior of Sao Paulo and other states.

Daniel was also the coordinator of the group of PT intellectuals and politicians who are drawing up the government programme to be presented by Lula in his election campaign.

The FARB is an unknown group, and many doubt that it was actually responsible for the murder of Mayor da Costa Santos of Campinas, as it claimed in November.

The group's website states that it has more than 50 active members willing to commit ''unprecedented crimes'' to punish the ''corrupt traitors of leftist parties'' like the PT who, it says, are moving towards the centre-right only to win power.

The website attempts to give the impression that FARB is an ultra-leftist group rebelling against the PT's increasingly moderate stance. However, the rhetoric used does not resemble the Marxist jargon typical of such groupings.

The attacks on PT leaders recall a 1980 wave of bombings by right-wing radicals upset with the gradual return to democracy towards the end of the 1964-85 military regime.

That wave of terrorist attacks came to an end when a bomb that exploded in a car in Rio de Janeiro killed a sergeant and injured a captain. The explosion revealed that the two army officers were preparing an attack against a rally to celebrate International Labour Day on the First of May, in which thousands would have been killed.

However, an army investigation concluded that the officers and the army itself were actually the targets of the attack.

The state of Sao Paulo, the richest and most industrialised in this country of 170 million, is a traditional centre of radical conservative groups that form part of the support base of Paulo Maluf, a former governor of the state during the dictatorship.

Maluf is still popular despite the numerous cases of corruption in which he is implicated. Analysts say the advance of the PT may have frightened the most conservative sectors.

Crime is also soaring in Sao Paulo. Last year 307 kidnappings were reported, 125 percent up on the previous year.