BY BEN REID
Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva — candidate of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party) — received over 46% of the vote in the first round of Brazil's presidential elections, held October 6. He must contest a second round of voting on October 27.
The second ranked candidate — Jose Serra of the outgoing Brazilian Social Democratic Party administration — received just 23% of the vote in the first round.
With such a large lead it appears fairly certain that Lula will win the presidential position. While such a win will be welcomed by Brazil's workers and poor, Lula's campaign has proceeded on the basis of many compromises with the interests of both Western transnational corporations and Brazil's capitalist elite. These compromises contain the seeds of a possible future crisis for a PT administration.
In the meantime the international and domestic opposition to the PT is certainly going to run a campaign of political and economic intimidation to discourage a pro-Lula vote in the second round. The Brazilian currency — the real — has already been devalued by over 40% so far this year.
This is despite Lula running what was certainly his most moderate election campaign since his initial contesting (and almost winning) of the presidency in 1989.
The PT has, historically, mostly run in elections as part of alliances with "popular and democratic" forces. In this year's campaign, Lula and a majority of the articulacao faction of the PT formed an alliance with Brazil's conservative and very small Liberal Party (PL), despite opposition from the PT's left-wing. Jose Alencar, a senator and textile factory owner ran as Lula's vice-presidential candidate.
Alencar and the PL espouse a strange and contradictory ideology based on beliefs of the evangelical United Church of the Kingdom of God. The basis of Alencar's alliance with Lula is a shared and vague opposition to aspects of the neo-liberal policies of the previous administration of Ferdinand Henrique Cardoso. Alencar is critical, for instance, of the high interest rates charged for short-term loans for business by Brazil's central bank.
Alencar's participation did, however, allow Lula to gain an audience among 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of big business. This even included a campaign visit to the Sao Paulo stock exchange!
Ominously, Lula has played down aspects of the PT's leftist policies, such as its opposition to the power of the International Monetary Fund, which has continually demanded that Brazil implement austere economic policies that have hurt the poor. Brazil maintains a national debt of US$260 billion. Lula pledged to honour IMF agreements should he win the election.
In the week before the election, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the main pro-business party in Brazil — the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement — even came out in support of Lula's candidacy.
These pronouncements and alliances contradict the program that was adopted by the PT at its 12th congress in 2001, which spoke of the need for a "necessary rupture" with internationally and nationally supported strategies of neo-liberal economic growth and development. It was recognised that these policies had failed Brazil's poor.
The PT, which emerged in the 1980s as the main radical opposition to Brazil's military dictatorship, has a strong base among Brazil's lower and middle classes. It has acted in support of important trade union and social movements such as the CUT trade union federation and the Movimento Sem Terra (MST) landless workers movement.
PT-led local and state governments have (not without many difficulties) implemented radical reforms aimed at reducing corruption and improving social services. Most notable are the local and state governments of Porto Alegre and Rio Grande do Sul, which have been become internationally famous as a result of the implementation of "participatory budget" processes and the sponsorship of two highly successful World Social Forums.
Ironically, it has been when the PT has run on its most left-wing platform with the least alliances with parties of the right that it has performed best in elections. Lula's high vote has probably more to do with the crisis in the main pro-etablishment parties than his alliance with Alencar.
After initial successes in winning popular support through dubious economic reforms, the previous administration became racked with division after the country's currency crisis of 1998. Corruption scandals resulted in the collapse of the ruling coalition. Cardoso's Social Democratic Party and the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement could not come up with any credible project of government. The Party of the Liberal Front (descended from the old dictatorship) was, likewise, unable to present any credible policies to confront Brazil's economic and social problems.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 16, 2002.
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