ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Leftist Party Poised for Huge Leap

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 23 2002 (IPS) - Next Sunday’s election in Brazil, expected to catapult Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency, will also serve as the chance for his leftist Workers’ Party (PT) to become the most influential political force in Latin America’s giant.

But a PT government headed by Lula will have to overcome the financial crisis it will inherit from the administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso before it can put into practice its own policy proposals aimed at economic growth and reducing the country’s enormous social inequalities.

There is unanimous agreement that Lula is going to win Sunday’s runoff election, which will be a unique experience not only because a former steelworker with only four years of formal schooling is going to govern the world’s eighth largest economy, but because he will do so at the head of a left-wing party.

The PT’s rise to power is the culmination of 22 years of growth based mainly on the organised labour movement.

The PT, whose strongholds are Brazil’s large cities, is a child of the new labour activism born of the country’s industrialisation and accelerated urbanisation process, which was mainly driven by the car-making industry, starting in the 1950s.

It is no coincidence that the city of Sao Bernardo do Campo, the hub of Brazil’s automobile industry, located on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, was also the birthplace of the PT, as well as the Central Unica de Travalhadores (CUT) central trade union, both of which Lula helped found.

With his solid base in the labour movement, Lula does not share similarities with other leaders who have emerged in Latin America merely on the strength of their charisma or personal actions, like Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chávez, nor is he a product of the traditional parties.

His ascent coincides with the steady growth of the PT, which has been fast in historic terms but gradual and slow in comparison to new movements that have carried a number of presidents in Latin America to power.

President Cardoso himself won the presidency in 1994 and was reelected in 1998 largely thanks to the opportunity he seized, as finance minister, to design and implement the Plan Real, which put an end to three decades of high inflation.

Cardoso was not even the best-known or most influential leader of his Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), which was founded by dissidents of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) six years before his triumph at the polls.

The PSDB is now facing the prospect of being ”absorbed” by the PT, according to parliamentary Deputy Antonio Delfim Netto, who served as finance and planning minister under the de facto military governments that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985.

Delfim Netto pointed out that the two parties are vying to be the chief representative of social democracy in Brazil – an area in which the PT, with its strong grassroots labour base, enjoys an advantage over the PSDB, which is made up of ”intellectuals and technocrats.”

In the first round of elections on Oct 6, the PT chalked up what Lula termed ”the greatest triumph by a leftist party in Latin America.”

The most outstanding aspect of that victory was the overwhelming support for Lula, who garnered 46.44 percent of the vote – twice the share of the rival who will fight it out with him on Sunday, the ruling coalition’s José Serra, a centrist former health minister.

The PT also won the greatest number of spots in the 513-member lower house of Congress, where its representation ballooned from 58 to 91 seats. It also grew in the 81-member Senate, from eight to 14 seats.

In addition, Lula’s party gained the greatest share of slots in the state legislatures – 147 – and is the only force that will have at least one parliamentary deputy representing each one of Brazil’s 27 states.

Its gubernatorial candidates also made a much stronger-than- expected showing.

The party’s electoral success coincided with opinion poll results that show that it is considered the best organised and most ”authentic” – or ideologically cohesive – political force in the country.

All of which points to the possibility that the PT will become the strongest force in Brazilian politics. Since 1989, when Lula and the PT made their first bid for the presidency, the big worry of conservative sectors was to present candidates capable of defeating the leftist party.

Also contributing to the PT’s growing power is the waning strength of the country’s leading parties.

The PMDB and Liberal Front Party both split in the current elections, and are unlikely to hold together under a PT government, according to political scientists.

Indeed, analysts are predicting a reorganisation of Brazil’s conservative parties and politicians.

Business leaders like the president of the Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo, Horacio Piva, are recommending that the PSDB strike up an alliance with the PT, despite the tension generated between the two parties by the dispute for the second round of elections.

But Brazil’s serious economic troubles are standing in the way of closer ties with the PT. Serra warned in his election campaign that ”Lula’s inexperience” could lead Brazil to an Argentine- style economic and social crisis.

A debacle on the scale of Argentina’s economic collapse would give credit to a prediction by former senator Jarbas Passarinho, who served as education and labour minister under the military regimes that governed in the 1970s, that a government of the left is like ”measles: it occurs only once.”

ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Leftist Party Poised for Huge Leap

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 23 2002 (IPS) - Next Sunday’s election in Brazil, expected to catapult Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency, will also serve as the chance for his leftist Workers’ Party (PT) to become the most influential political force in Latin America’s giant.
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