Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: The Threat from the Left

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 18 2006 (IPS) - A small woman whose apparent fragility is deceptive and is belied by her sharp tongue is running for president in Brazil on a platform based on cherished causes of the left that she feels have been betrayed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Workers Party (PT).

Heloisa Helena de Moares Carvalho, who has held a seat in the Senate since 1999, is known for her loud expressions of indignation in a campaign that otherwise remains muted with just two weeks to go to the elections, even though voters will choose a new president, governors in the country’s 27 states, and members of state and national parliaments.

The candidate of the tiny Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), which she founded with other leftist leaders in June 2004, Heloisa Helena – as she is known – surprised the country, and the world, when she earned 10 percent poll ratings in July.

The opinion poll results indicated that she could have a strong influence on what were expected to be polarised elections between Lula and his main rival, social democrat Geraldo Alckmin.

“I’ll be in the second round” of the elections, she told foreign correspondents in a press conference Monday, although the latest opinion polls show that her support has leveled off at around nine percent, and that Lula stands a good chance of scoring a first-round victory on Oct. 1.

Lula’s PT today “is hostage to an ambitious and inward-looking leadership capable of eliminating anyone opposed to their plans for power,” and is no longer a leftist party but has become “virtually a group of rogues,” although “many of the party’s militants are still honest leftwingers and socialists who believe it is possible to fight from within for their ideals,” she said.

In her scathing attacks, she referred to the corruption scandals that since last year have brought down a number of PT leaders and several ministers, accused of taking part in mechanisms through which allied legislators were bribed to vote for government initiatives, or investigated in connection with other cases, one of which involved the mysterious murder of a mayor.

Heloisa Helena founded the PSOL six months after she was expelled from the PT along with three other lawmakers for breach of party discipline, when they refused to toe the party line on several votes in Congress which they believed ran counter to the leftist PT’s founding principles.

She frequently says that it was precisely her “loyalty to the party” that led to her expulsion.

For instance, she voted against social security reform pushed through by the Lula administration in 2003, which raised the retirement age and cut the benefits of public employees.

HH, as she is referred to by several local newspapers, defends socialism, which she calls “The most beautiful declaration of love for humanity,” citing the classic formula “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” but “always with freedom” as emphasised by the name of her party.

“We don’t identify with the totalitarian experience; we are not heirs to that European tradition,” she added, while also rejecting “the ugly history of capitalism” and “the wall between Mexico and the United States, where those seeking the ‘land of the free’ are shot down.”

“I won’t experience socialism in my lifetime, but I am contributing to building that future,” she said. For now, she added, the question is implementing government policies aimed at “the democratisation of the state, and of the country’s wealth, land and culture.”

“A state is not democratic if 76 percent of youngsters between the ages of 14 and 24 are not doing anything – neither studying, nor practicing sports nor arts – and 72 percent of children between the ages of zero and six years have never been in day care,” she said.

In order for the national economy to grow seven percent, twice the current rate, all that would have to be done is to lower the interest rates set by the Central Bank, which are the highest in the world and drive up the cost of servicing the public debt, due to “total fiscal irresponsibility” on the part of the government, she argued.

Slashing the interest rates would free up 87 billion reals (40 billion dollars) a year for public spending on infrastructure, sanitation, energy and sectors that generate many jobs and income for Brazilians, according to Heloisa Helena’s economic proposals.

She said the interest rates are defined “by decree” by “three illuminated” members of the National Monetary Council, the ministers of finance and planning, and the president of the Central Bank, who follow “the neoliberal rhetoric” and see economic growth higher than 3.5 percent as “unhealthy.”

Her campaign platform also includes faster agrarian reform, with a goal of settling 250,000 families a year on land of their own in order to “democratise land ownership,” a suspension of foreign debt servicing, a reduction of the workday without cutting wages, rejection of the U.S.-led Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) initiative, and support for Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”.