ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Lula, from Revolutionary to Social Democrat

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 4 2002 (IPS) - Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is just one step away from the presidency in Brazil, but far removed from the radical postures and ideas he advocated when his political career began more than 20 years ago.

The fiery trade unionist who challenged the de facto military regime at the vanguard of historic strikes starting in 1978, and who founded the Workers’ Party (PT) in 1980 to push for a socialist revolution, has undergone a transformation that has led him to his current status as front-runner in the polls, by a broad margin, for Sunday’s presidential elections.

”The PT has changed,” and is a social democratic party today, ”the only one that could be capable of truly applying social democracy” in Brazil, said parliamentary Deputy Delfim Netto, who during several periods was in charge of economic policy under the military governments that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985.

Lula’s party can count on ”a fundamental element – the workers,” because it arose from the trade union movement, said Netto in an interview published in the Thursday edition of the daily Folha de Sao Paulo.

”A social democratic party can’t be led only by university professors,” he remarked sarcastically, referring to the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), led by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a world-renowned sociologist and academic.

Netto even predicted that the PT would soon swallow up the PSDB, which is one of the three strongest forces in parliament, with nearly twice the number of legislators than the coalition led by Lula.

A PT-PSDB alliance in the government to take office on Jan 1 has already been suggested by the president of the powerful Federation of Sao Paulo Industries, Horacio Lafer Piva.

The PT, and not the PSDB, is today ”the tropical version of social democracy in the European sense of the term – a party with strong trade union roots, reformist rather than revolutionary,” concurred Paulo Nogueira Batista, Jr., an economist close to the PT, in another Folha de Sao Paulo article.

In the 1970s and 1980s, ”social democracy” was a dirty word for Lula and his associates in the trade union movement as well as the PT, which only a few years ago removed the references to Marxism in its basic documents.

Lula’s transformation, described as ”maturing” by his supporters and even some of his opponents, occurred while the PT, founded by trade unionists, intellectuals, small revolutionary leftist groups, and progressive social and religious movements, built up experience.

Over the past 22 years, the party has grown steadily in Brazil’s large cities, and has governed important state capitals like Sao Paulo and Brasilia, and a few states as well, frequently putting into practice innovative policies.

One of the innovations introduced by the PT in Brazil is the ”participative budget,” originally developed by the municipal government of the southern city of Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

The ”participative budget” draws all social actors into the decision-making process of allocating local government funds.

Another successful pioneering effort is a programme granting monthly stipends to poor families who keep their children in school, which was first implemented in Brasilia, the capital.

Both initiatives have been replicated in other countries.

The PT has consolidated its position as a major political force, by far the strongest leftist party, and is seen by the public as the most coherent and least corrupt political party, despite a few isolated scandals that have broken out since last year.

But it is Lula’s leadership and charisma that will play the decisive role in his likely victory Sunday, in which he may win outright without the need to go to an Oct 27 run-off.

The life story of the former metalworker, who only completed four years of primary school, awakens admiration in many. But others are opposed to his political aspirations, as they consider a university education essential to running a country.

Lula, who turns 57 on election day, came from humble origins in Pernambuco, a state in Brazil’s arid, impoverished northeast – a region that provided cheap labour for the industrial and agricultural development of the south.

At the age of seven, he moved to the outskirts of Sao Paulo with his parents and six siblings. His childhood, during which he worked as a street vendor and delivery boy, was marked by the abuse meted out by his father, who later abandoned the family.

After taking a technical-vocational course, he became a metalworker at 14, and lost his left pinky finger in an accident at the age of 18.

His school for leadership was the labour movement. In 1975, he was elected president of the Metalworkers’ Union in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the hub of Brazil’s car-making industry on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, the country’s biggest city.

He led strikes in 1978, 1979 and 1980, during which the city’s 150,000 metalworkers staged mass protests. His activism cost him a month in prison in 1980, and turned him into a national hero.

Since then, he has helped found the Central Unica de Travalhadores (CUT), the biggest central trade union, but has thrown most of his energy into building up the PT. In 1986 he was elected to the lower house of Congress, but showed little interest in the traditional parliamentary way of doing politics.

In 1989, he ran for the presidency for the first time, kindling excitement and hope among leftists and social activists across Brazil. He was narrowly defeated in the second round of elections by Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached on corruption charges and removed from office in 1992.

Today, Lula admits that at that time neither he nor his party were ready to govern this country of 170 million, due to a lack of experience, and to the party’s sectarianism.

In 1994 and 1998, he was defeated in presidential elections by a former fellow opponent of the military dictatorship – Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Cardoso became unbeatable after the mid-1994 implementation of the Plan Real, which he designed as finance minister and which tamed the runaway inflation strangling the country since the 1960s.

Now it seems to be Lula’s turn, the poll favourite, who might even win in the first round, if he takes over 50 percent of the vote.

His persistence brings to mind Salvador Allende and François Mitterrand, socialists who won the presidencies of Chile and France, respectively, after several failed attempts.

Lula’s running-mate is José Alencar, a centre-right senator who was also forced into a variety of low-paid jobs as a child to support his poor family, and today owns the Coteminas textile factory, one of the biggest in Brazil.

ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Lula, from Revolutionary to Social Democrat

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 4 2002 (IPS) - Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is just one step away from the presidency in Brazil, but far removed from the radical postures and ideas he advocated when his political career began more than 20 years ago.
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