Breakthrough for the
Workers' Party
A POLITICAL earthquake -that is the international press's most common description of the results of the municipal elections in Brazil. The final results will only be published in a week or so, but they are already known for the big capitals of the various states. President Sarney's party, the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) has taken a resounding slap in the face. DOMINIQUE LEGRAND A BOVE ALL, the PMDB lost in
Latin America's biggest city, São Paulo and its belt of working class satellite towns, where the Workers' Party (PT) candidate won the
THIS ONE SHOULD HANDLE BETTER...
mayoralty. She came in ahead of Paulo Maluf of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), a right-wing politician whose name is associated with the military dictatorship and various corruption scandals. Likewise, the PT won Porto Alegre and Vitoria, two state capitals. In Rio de Janeiro, the country's second largest city, the winner was the candidate of the Democratic Workers' Party (PDT), which is led by the populist caudillo (chief) Leonel Brizola.
The PT, which was born in 1980 out of the resurgence of the class-struggle trade-union movement under the dictatorship, focused its campaign on working-class demands, for a moratorium on payment of the $120 billion foreign debt and for the reform promised in 1985 when the military ceded power to the New Republic but which today is completely stalled (see /V 127).
The PT's victory was not a bolt from the blue. It came in the midst of a wave of social struggles and strikes mainly in the large Brazilian public sector (public administration workers, engineering, oil, and
Inflation will undoubtedly hit 1,000 per cent for 1988 as a whole. On November 4, the government and representatives of the employers and the union - except the United Federation of workers (CUT),
ECONOMIC
BRAZIL which is linked to the PT — signed a social pact designed to limit the rise of inflation (and above all wages!) to 25% a month.
However, the PMDB's failure on the economic front was not the only issue. From another standpoint, the worst was the intervention of the army three days before the election against striking Volta Redonda steelworkers. The military fired on the workers occupying the factory, killing three people and wounding dozens.
Bloody demonstration of armed forces' power
This action was a bloody demonstration of the power of the armed forces as provid ed for in the constitution just adopted by the New Republic. The granting to the military of the responsibility for "overseeing respect for law and the maintenance of domestic order" was not just words
Another confrontation today is taking place between the government and 45,000 oil workers who are on strike over wage issues. President Sarney has called on the congress to declare the strike illegal on the grounds that it affects the national interests If this proposal is adopted, it will enable him — as the constitution again provides — to start firing the strikers and replacing them with other workers who accept the conditions imposed by the state-employer.
In a year's time, in November 1989, the first presidential elections by universal suffrage since 1960 are to be held. The PT is running Inacio Da Silva, "Lula." *
RENEWAL
MILITARY
GOVERNMENT
CIVILIAN
GOVERNMENT
BARLING
The Christian Science Monitor
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BRAZIL
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Election campaigns dominated by the
THE 1984 Israeli elections deadlocked the two major political formations, forcing them to form a national unity government that could only function on the basis of consensus. In other words, a government that could only oversee the
It is true that under the leadership of Shimon Peres, head of the Labour Party, the government was able to resolve two serious problems that it had inherited from the previous administration. In less than a year the Israeli army at last pulled out of the Lebanese quagmire. And a few months later, thanks to a bold economic plan and active collaboration by
Histadrut, the Labour Party-controlled Israeli labour federation, it managed to curb the galloping inflation rate, which had hit 400%, and introduce a certain amount of
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988
ISRAELI STATE intifada status quo. economic stability. MICHEL WARSCHAWSKI
UT ONCE he had pulled the Likud's chestnuts out of the fire, of chief of state to Yitzhak Shamir. And the rightist leader's political program had always been confined to managing the status quo and rejecting any sort of new initiative, whether political or economic.