THE LULA GOVERNMENT: at the end of 2004 João Machado, once a leading member of the PT and now a militant of the P-SoL (Party of Socialism and Liberty), offers a balance results have clarified the nature of the transforma- tion of the Workers' Party (PT, principal party of the Brazilian left, and principal party in the coun- DEFEAT IN THE MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS FOR THE PT In this article on the political situation in Brazil sheet of the municipal elections in October. The try's government. 18 AFTER TWO YEARS OF Although the results can be interpreted in dif- ferent ways, it is difficult to escape the con- clusion that the PT suffered a defeat, and this evaluation extends to the Lula government as well. The PT suffered a significant reverse in the big cities, a small reverse in the medium- sized cities, but an increase in its support in the smaller towns. The greatest setbacks were suffered in the centre-south, the most developed region of the country. At the same time, this electoral process has crystallised a new political profile for the PT. one which aggravates the defeat, as we shall see. On the other hand, the PSDB (the party of the previous president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso), which obtained slightly fewer votes than the PT, emerged victorious out of the elections: it won control of strategic cities, beginning with the biggest city in the country, Sao Paulo. The facts about the municipal elections In the first round, the PT obtained 16.3 mil- lion votes (17.2 per cent of the total) for its mayoral candidates, as against 11.9 million votes obtained in the first round of the mu- nicipal elections of 2000. So it can claim to be the best-supported party in Brazil, a little ahead of the PSDB, which obtained 16.5 per cent of the votes. These votes were followed by the conservative parties with between 15 per cent and 11.8 per cent. The six 'me- dium-sized' parties obtained between 6.4 and 4.7 per cent of the vote. Of the minor parties, the Green Party (PV) got just under 1.5 per cent of the votes and the Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B) 0.8 per cent. The only two parties which presented them- selves as left critics of the government in these elections - the PSTU (United Social- ist Workers' Party) and the PCO (Party of the Workers' Cause) got very low votes - together they scored less than 0.5 per cent. The PT has continued as the biggest numbers of mayors, the PT is only in fifth position behind four right-wing par- ties (mainly because of their greater weight in the smaller cities). In other words, the PT has retreated in the major cities, but has contin- ued as the best-supported party in these cities; it has grown in the smaller cities, but there it is still behind the other three big parties, and even behind a medium-sized, right-wing party like the PP.
old Arena party: the party of the military dictatorship. then to the PMDB. ne stranges: cars atme beganing of the post- In the second round, the result was clearly worse for the PT. Out of the eleven metro- politan centres of the country, the PT gov- erned in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Porto Alegre, Belem and Goiania. it solely governs in Belo Horizonte, Recife In the other 85 state capitals and cities with more than 150,000 voters, the number of cities governed by the PT has fallen much less sharply, from 22 to 20, but with the loss of important municipalities and regional centres in the centre-south where it Clearly the most serious de- feats were suffered in Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, to which we return below. The PT leadership's interpretation of the results Leaders of the PT argue that the party has achieved a victory, that it got a bigger vote, with a more even national distribution, than in the previous municipal elections in 2000. But taking into account the political weight of the defeats in the big cities and in the big towns of the centre-south region, the headline (albeit slightly exaggerated) of the Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil's most important daily) on 1 November makes sense: "The PT was pushed into the obscure corners of the country'! Whether we characterise the results as a vic- tory or a defeat obviously depends on our interpretation of what has happened. The question can be posed in the following way: did the link to the Lula government, and the support received from it, help or hinder the It is indisputable that the PT has suffered very significant defeats, so one way of making this fact compatible with the claim that it was an overall victory is to attribute the defeats to local problems. This is how the leaders of the PT explain it. This works in some cases, but the generalised defeat in states where the party had its most deep-rooted support (like Rio Grande do Sul) and among the citizens of some of the most politicised and informed regions of the country, clearly shows that na- São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Fortaleza The greatest defeats of the PT. in Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, and the greatest victory. in Fortaleza, show this national process at work. The defeated candidates in the first to cities were Marta Suplicy, the mayor of Sao Paulo. who was standing for re-election, and Raul 1.- This is a reference to what happened to other parties inertormed respera ga.ermer: dictatorship period, in the sense that they lost political weight. Pont, former mayor and candidate of the PT in Porto Alegre. To the question, 'Who defeated Marta and Pont?' the sociologist Chico de Ol- iveira, historic militant of the PT, now partici- pating in the construction of the new left party, the P-SoL, responded without ambiguity: the Lula government and its neo-liberal economic policies have hit the working classes hard and impoverished the middle layers. Transformed into a transmission belt for the Lula govern- ment, the PT has suspended and expelled criti- cal parliamentarians and has sunk to the level of the other parties in the eyes of a good part of the population. This has eroded the loyalty to the PT of important layers of social activists and left intellectuals, a devastating develop- ment for a party which until now has defined itself as socialist and different from the other But some particular aspects of important cit- ies must be highlighted in a national assess- In Sao Paulo, Marta's administration had a high level of approval (above all for its social assistance programmes), but no capac- ity for social mobilisation. the electoral process, that capacity has been further reduced by the agreement with Paulo Maluf (of the PP, one of the most right-wing Brazilian politicians and symbol of the cor- ruption in the country) which was formalised for the second round, but already in operation from the first round. Many agreements signed in the course of power-sharing with the right- wing parties have been detrimental for the people, particularly in the area of health. This process has consolidated the perception that there were no substantial differences between Marta's methods of governing and those of her Many sections of the left called for a 'no' vote against Marta and Serra in the second round, including a section of militants of the Catho- lic left who are formally still in the PT, repre- sented by the ex-deputy Plinio de Arruda Sam- paio, one of the most important leaders of the Catholic left. Even some who had previously supported the PT voted for Serra in order to On the other hand, Marta Suplicy won in the poorest region of the city of Sao Paulo. Many have tried to argue that this was a sign of the 'left' character of her campaign. But this vote represents less an attraction to the non-existent 'left' character of her campaign and more the effect of traditional clientelist politics. Much of the Brazilian working class, the sector which has formal employment, has a higher standard of living than the poorest people. It was this social sector of workers, the most politically active. which formed the traditional electorate of the PT and it is in this sector that support for the part has declined. In Porto Alegre, the right, re-coordinated in a strong anti-PT front, had already won back the governorship of the state (Rio Grande do Sul) in 2002, and now only a rise in the level of political debate could have defeated it. But Tarso Genro's abandoment of his position as elected mayor halfway through his adminis- tration (in order to contest the state governor- ship), the mistakes of the PT administration, the advice of the electoral marketing expert Duda Mendonca and 'the lowering of the uto- pian horizon', not only noted but defended by Tarso Genro, led to the defeat of the PT. In the capital of the World Social Forum, in the state where the PT left has most strength, the space vacated by the party militants has been occupied by the political "professionals' and the discourse of the PT has aligned itself with that of the national party leaders, even though the candidate for the mayoralty, Raul Pont, is one of the most recognised leaders of the left The candidates of the PT in general were pres- sured into defending the Lula government. While the election campaign was not based, in general, around national issues, the profile of the PT's political intervention corresponded to the positions of the federal government, which they defended in the municipal campaigns. The traditional heterogeneity of the PT mem- bership was substantially reduced and an anti- neoliberal profile was presented in very few places. The fundamental exception was For- taleza (to which we return below). Essentially, the space of the left in society has been occu- pied by sections of this neutralised PT and by the growth of the PDT, PSB and PC do B, with their similarly moderate discourses. Without doubt the most disappointing de- feat, both nationally and internationally, suf- fered in these elections was in Porto Alegre. But the greatest success was offered by the militants of the PT in Fortaleza. Rebelling against the national leadership of the PT, which had decided to support Inacio Arrudo, from the most pro-government wing of the PC do B, Luizianne Lins and her comrades on the left of the PT maintained her candi- dacy. Her criticisms of the local oligarchies as well as the neo-liberal policies of the Lula government (made with some caution, given her position as a PT candidate, but made all the same) enthused the militants of the party. She constructed a campaign with very few resources, but offering a lively dialogue with the situation facing the majority of the popu- lation. She showed that it is possible to fight and win by raising the 'utopian horizon' And that there only exists an 'electoral con- vergence towards the centre' in the absence 19
Although Lula supported Luizianne Lins in the second round, her victory had more elements of defeat than of victory for the Lula government. (See adjoining box for sections of an interview with Luizianne Lins) The left's interpretation of the election results Several factors explain the defeats of the can- didates of the Lula government, including negative evaluations by sections of the old militant social base of the PT of many meas- ures taken by the Lula government. These sections include workers in the informal sec- tor as well as the more politicised parts of the middle classes. The pension reforms, which led to the expulsion from the PT of Senator Heloisa Helena and others; the small rise in the minimum wage; the confrontation of the bank workers' strike and a frustation with the conduct of the party in the last two years, are all part of this negative assessment, leading to a decline in the identification of those sec- LUIZIANNE LINS' VICTORY lected as mayor of Fortaleza, a city E of almost two million inhabitants, capital of the state of Ceara (in the North-East of Brazil), Luizianne Lins is militant of the Socialist Democracy (DS) tendency of the Workers' Party (PT). She had to face Inacio Aruda, candidate of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) who had the support of the majority of the national leadership of the PT in the first round. Luizianne was one of the rare PT candidates to receive the active support of militants who had left the party after the expulsion of Sena- tor Heloisa Helena and the MPs Baba, Joao Fontes and Luciana Genro, to found the party of Socialism and Freedom (PSoL). Predicted to lose, Luizianne created a sensation by com- ing second in the first round with 22.3 per cent of the votes. In the second round she won with 56.2 per cent of the votes against the can- didate of the Party of the Liberal Front, and was described by the press as 'the new star of the Brazilian Left'. Below is a translation of parts of the interview she gave to the monthly Democracia Socialista (n° 8, November-De- cember 2004). LL: Since in the first round we had received neither resources nor help from the party na- tionally, we staked everything on a militant campaign. The militants were just as active when the polls were giving us 3 per cent as when we had a chance of winning after the result of the first round. DS: Was that he fact that you are a woman also used by your opponents? 20 tors with the PT. Moreover, the dominant po- litical practices of the party have qualitively changed, consolidating the 'new PT' estab- lished by the election of Lula. This has been keenly felt by the more conscious sections of the PT base, and it is significant that of the PT deputies who supported the neo-liberal reforms, only one (Lindberg Farias, in Nova Iguacu) was victorious in this election. The PT candidate in Porto Alegre, Raul Pont, from the left of the PT, tried to explain the situation both after the first rounds and after the final result. Analysing the defeat, he em- phasised the attitude of the Lula government towards the bank workers' strike, which was as hard as or even harder than the attitude of the employers; the pension reform; the problem of the minimum wage; and the ex- pulsion from the party of the deputy Luciana Genro (who is from Porto Alegre) and the other PT parliamentarians. In other words, the Lula government has alienated signifi- cant sections of the militants and electoral base of the PT - and this played an impor- tant role in the defeats in the big cities. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva LL: Always. They insisted on the fact that I was the only woman PT candidate for mayor of a state capital. It's not a coincidence. The participation of women in various spheres of social activity is difficult, politics is just another instance. But after all, the other ten candidates were men and it's me. the only woman, who was elected... DS: What other lessons can the PT learn from this process? LL: You have to place your faith in militancy, do politics differently from the bourgeoisie. Our success is a clear indication in that di- rection. We didn't have paid activists, every- thing was done by people who were fighting for their ideals, the way the PT always did it before. DS: You're going to govern the city, what will be the mechanisms of developing participa- tory democracy? Transformations in the culture of the party An increase in the PT's support in the smaller towns had been expected. It was a conse- quence of gaining control of the federal gov- ernment and the use of its 'machine', whether to strengthen the party, or to integrate tradi- tional politicians by offering to reinforce their client base with social programes like the Family Budget. But in these elections this process has been additionally amplified through many alliances with conservative parties. In any case, the upshot is that for the PT the elections have lost their previous char- acter of a free and creative political interven- tion, with the aim of raising the conscious- ness of the voters. So, the very broad range of alliances de- fined by the PT, which incorporated parties like the PTB, the PMDB and the PL, but also the PP and 'rivals' like the PSDB and PFL, also appears to have had a very nega- tive electoral impact. One consequence has been the loss of many PT councillors, particularly in the principal cities. LL: The participatory budget will be a prin- ciple for the administration. But we have to broaden participatory democracy beyond the single issue of the budget. We have to radical- ise democracy, that's exactly what is missing from the PT at national level. Popular participation will be something ab- solutely new for Fortaleza. For the moment there exists an apparatus of the city hall with some mechanisms of participatory democra- cy...There's nothing new there, and - although I don't like the word - nothing different. It's just a way of 'doing politics'. DS: What will your priorities be? LL: We are going to stake a lot on children and young people. Nearly 40 per cent of the population of Fortaleza is under 18. We have serious problems with education. Basic edu- cation is reasonably accessible to everyone, but that doesn't mean that the pupils stay in school. So the big challenge is to improve municipal education. In Fortaleza the system of family health care only reaches 15.4 per cent of the population. That's absurd when we are over-supplied with health centres and hospitals. The universalisation of the fam- ily health care programme, including dental care, is a priority. The question of housing is also very important. We have 92 sectors that are dangerous and 75,000 people live there. All the year round these people die because of the rains which cause mudslides. In addi- tion, Fortaleza suffers from a terrible scourge, which I denounced as a municipal councillor and MP - sexual tourism. These are questions that society will have to discuss. IV Online magazine, IV363 - January 2005
Brazilian Municipal Elections October 2004. First round results Major Parties PT Mayoral Candidates 16.3 million (17.2%) (2000, 11.9 million) PSDB, (Party of previous President Cardoso) 16.5% PMDB (centre-right) 15 °. PFL (right-wing) 11.8 ° Medium Sized Parties: scored between 6.4 and 4.7 per cent of the vote PP (the most right-wing party) PDT (old populist party of the centre-left, but clearly to the right for many sectors) PL (the Liberal Party) PPS (Popular Socialist Party. a descendent of the old Brazilian Communist Party) PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party, more of the centre than centre-left). Minor Parties PV (Green Party) just under 1.5 % PC do B (Communist Party of Brazil) 0.8 % Parties which presented themselves as left critics of the government and together scored less than 0.5 per cent. PSTU (United Socialist Workers' Party) PCO (Party of the Workers' Cause) oreover, this new way of running election campaigns has become -generalised in the PT; they are conducted in a depoliticised way by special- ists in political marketing and based upon a level of spending normally possible only through a relationship with bourgeois groups . Thus on the one hand, the support for the party has declined among some of the most organised sectors of the working class, on the other hand, its involvement with employers, rural landowners, public service concession- aries and other capitalist sectors, has in- creased. The 'professionalisation' of the campaigns, which was already strongly marked in the cities of Sao Paulo state, has now become the national norm. The result has been the disappearance of mili- tancy and of red flags. Changes in the social base of the PT The conclusion we can arrive at is that, rather than a fall in votes for the PT (in any case, as we saw, the PT vote in most of the country went up), what characterises this electoral defeat for the PT is the transformation of its social and electoral base. In summary, the PT is today less a party of the social movements, of left militants, than a party organised at the level of the State apparatus, with political clienteles, and with electoral campaigns con- ducted by bourgeois 'professional' methods. Of course, this process is not finished, but big steps have been taken in that direction. The PT still has some support in the social movements and among left militants. Al- though their disgust with the Lula govern- ment is very great, many sectors still con- sider it as 'their' government. These same sectors, on the other hand, have been evaluat- ing the politics of the Lula government in a very critical way. Even the leadership of the main trade union federation, the CUT, which is strongly linked to the PT 'majority camp', criticises the PT's economic policies. The case of the MST (Landless Workers' Movement) is important and complicated It has not broken with the government (yet), but it demands the dismissal of the president of the Central Bank and of the Finance minister, two key players in the implementation of economic policy. The direction of the movement of the most politically active popular sectors away from the Lula government is very clear. This process will certainly be rein- forced by the clear turn to the right which is occurring within the overall neo-liberal course of the Lula government. Dismissals, departures, 'coalition government' and consolidation of The dismissal of Carlos Lessa from the presidency of BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) is the clearest signal of the offensive now under- way. Lessa is from the 'nationalist' sector of the PMDB, which, although not a left party, represented a left wing of the Lula govern- ment. His dismissal can be explained by his successive confrontations with the principal leaders of the government's economic team, and in particular with the leadership of the Central Bank. The resignation of João Luiz Duboc Pinaud as president of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, after his harsh criticisms of the government's re- fusal to open the dictatorship's archives, was another very important departure. There have been other resignations from the government. Each case expresses a specific situation, but there is also a common root: the social-liberal character of the govern- ment is reducing or eliminating the space for political debate, and what increasingly pre- vails is the allocation of posts in accordance with agreements made with the 'allies'. Lula understood very well that his rivals in the PSDB have emerged stronger from the municipal elections and he is already begin- ning the preparations for his candidacy for re-election in 2006. He speaks, for example, of creating a 'coalition government' after a ministerial reshuffle. Since the government was already a 'coalition' in party terms from the start, this expression means a widening of the space for other parties in the government, thus reducing the number of ministers from The PP, the most right-wing party in the country, which does not have a minis- ter, but which has supported the government from the beginning, could obtain a portfolio. In recent weeks it has been announced that the growth of Brazil's Gross Domestic Prod- uct will be somewhat greater than had been expected - something above 5 per cent. This is still less than the average for third world countries. Moreover, the average wage has fallen. But these results are sufficient for Lula to declare that the economic policy of the gov- ernment has been a total success, and there is no possibility that it will change. The need for a left alternative In the second half of Lula's presidential term. it is clear that preparations for the 2006 elec- tions will be underway. The risk is that there will be an electoral but not a political polari- sation between the PT and the PSDB. The pattern of the elections of 2004 is likely to repeat itself, and the PT leadership and the bourgeois leaders are banking on this. Against this possibility, the P-SoL. the Party of Socialism and Liberty, has begun to build itself. It has just obtained the ap- proximately 340,000 signatures needed for legal registration as a party, and it is play- ing its part in the general reorganisation of the Brazilian left. Ths is not an easy task, but the consolidation of the right turn of the PT leaves no other alternative. 21
FOOD, HEALTH & MEGA-BUCKS The New Labour government has fi- nally woken up to the fact that there are serious and expensive health issues in our society, many though not all, linked to poor diet, that have got to be dealt with. This finally pro- duced a Public Health White Paper in November 2004. Better late than never, for warnings about obesity and all its associated illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes have been ignored for over thirty years. Here Jane Kelly argues that the situation is even worse. The deple- tion of minerals in the soil, and thus in our food, the links between a vitamin and mineral-starved diet as well as the pollution of our food and air with cancers, heart and other degenerative disease have also been known about for a long time, with the US Congress reporting problems with depletion of soils as early as 1938 and warning of the inevitable health problems which would ensue. 22
fter a series of food re- A lated scandals, such as BSE, E-Coli and foot and followed mouth disease, by revelations about the fat, sugar and salt drenched contents of processed foods, the government has fi- nally recognised that it will be cheaper to try and deal with the health implications now rather than stick to their free market principles. However, free market capital- ism will not be able to resolve this crisis. Most ordinary people will only be told part of the story because the food lobby, like the pharmaceutical industry, is very powerful and most will be left unaware of the real causes of many health problems. public statements Their just the tip of a very unpleasant iceberg. Global warming may lead to the icebergs melting, drowning low-lying countries in the process: the meltdown of years of eat- ing nutritionally 'dead', processed food, will be equally catastrophic - both for individuals and for society as a whole. The threat of a generation dying before its parents from the effects of what is ac- tually malnutrition, is very real - this in one of the richest countries in the world, with apparent superabundance in our well- stocked supermarkets. The prospect of spiralling health service costs as a result of poor diet has led even this government to recognise that something has to be done urgently. Needless to say the neo-liberal policies of privatisation of the welfare state that have been partly to blame for this situation, are not addressed. In schools, the balanced diet of the post- adverts for junk foods; playing fields have been sold off to fund education; all these have contributed to a deterioration in children's health. Nor is the relation between poverty, food and health seri- ously confronted. For obesity tends to be a disease of poverty, both here and in the US. It is the cheap, processed food that is most harmful, which combined with a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables, often not locally available, makes for a very unbalanced diet. While the new middle classes, who have more time to read be- tween the lines, turn increasingly to or- ganic foods and nutritional supplements, these are individual strategies not avail- able to most of the working class, for fi- nancial reasons. This shows that healthy eating is very much a class issue. THE WHITE PAPER'S CONTENTS The weakest part of the government proposals is of course the section on the food industry itself. Phrases like, 'the Government intends to discuss with the food industry how it might contribute'; 'introducing and interim targets for reducing sug- ar and fat levels'; 'we will work with the farming and food industries to co-ordinate action'; show the limits of the New Labour approach, which is to appeal to the food industry mo- nopolists to regulate themselves with not even the pretence of attempting any kind of democratic control. T he adulteration of food is not of course a new problem. The Co-operative movement was founded in the late 19th century to counter this common prac- tice. However, consciousness of these issues on the left, which existed in the early social- ist movements, has today been mostly lost. This is in part due to more state regulation of the food industry, particularly in the post World War 2 period and, in the advanced metropolitan countries at least, the apparent elimination of malnutrition, together with the highly deceptive appearance of supera- bundance in our supermarkets. Even with tighter controls, through the 20th century and throughout the world, about adulterated food and scandals drink, (cooking oils, wine, for example, littered the headlines. But now food is being adulterated on an industrial scale: chemical fertilisers pesticides and on plants; chemical additives in fizzy drinks; hydrogenated or trans fats and modi- fied starch in processed foods. It is big business. And no amount of "targets' or 'discussions' can overcome this one fact - the food industry is about making