Lula for president!
POLAND • BRAZIL him?
It is hard to answer that question because our entire bloc urgently needs to reform itself, and it is not yet clear whether Gorbachev is the product of this urgent need or vice-versa. It can be said with certainty that if the conservatives still had the upper hand in the Soviet Union, the struggle in Poland would be even harder. But, as I told you, the final outcome is historically inevitable, and it is not, and has never been in doubt.
What would I say to Gorbachev? I would tell him what Jaruzelski told me, that is that people sooner or later have to meet and come to an understanding. I would tell him also that he came late, and that if he had been in power instead of Brezhnev in 1980-81, things would probably have happened differently. • The social pact will impose economic sacrifices on the population. Do you think that the Poles are ready to endure these without protesting?
Sacrifices will undoubtedly have to be made. The society can confront them in two ways — either by considering that the system is unreformable and therefore looking to revolution; or by thinking, as I do, that there is a possibility of evolution without revolution, and therefore agreeing to pay the price of the reforms. It will be difficult to convince people, to overcome apathy, to regain enthusiasm. But, if you aid us, if together we provide the necessary guarantees, then I am sure that we can succeed. • How do you judge the behavior of Miodowicz and the official unions? Is there a serious danger that the more conservative groups in the party will obstruct application of the accords?
I don't think that is a real danger. There is a current in the party that is relying on demagogy, and something similar also exists in Solidarnosc.
But demagogy won't get very far in our country or in yours. It is necessary to work in such a way that the enemies of the reform will not be justified in the end and we will not suffer a failure that would wipe out the hopes for evolution and leave only the revolutionary alternative. • What democratic gains did you fail to obtain at the round-table that you intend continuing to fight for?
There are many, in every sector of social life. It is inevitable that we have only been able to take the first step. Our objective is a truly free and democratic Poland, like Italy.
That has always been our dream, both yesterday in clandestinity and today in our new role. The difference is that the dream has become concrete, and is now a real hope. * International Viewpoint #163 • May 15, 1989
PRESIDENTIAL elections will be held in Brazil next November. It will be a tricky test for the ruling class in a situation where successive Cruzado economic plans for stabilizing the currency have failed, inflation is worse than ever, the agrarian question remains explosive, and the debt burden continues to weigh heavily on the exploited. DANIEL BENSAID
S IN OTHER countries coming out of dictatorship, the democratic opening, far from being consolidated, remains under threat — the army and the repressive forces have made an orderly retreat to barracks — without being challenged as vigorously as in Argentina or Uruguay.
However, the differences are just as well-known. In terms of dependent countries in Latin America, Brazil is the most advanced in terms of indigenous industrial development. The bourgeoisie there has much greater social solidity than in the Andean countries and more political agility than in Mexico. As a result of the powerful expansion of the 1970s, an independent social and workers' movement emerged and consolidated itself during the "democratic transition, finding its expression in the formation of the United Workers Confederation (CUT) and the Workers Party(PT).
Can the PT follow up its municipal victories?
During their terms of office at the head of the municipalities and in local government, the two big majority bourgeois parties and their candidates saw their support decline rapidly. In the November 1988 municipal elections, the PT met with spectacular success, reaching scores of more than 30% in some large cities and winning some city halls such as São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Vitoria, and working-class suburbs in São Paulo (see /Vs 157, 158 & 161).
Buoyed up by this momentum, the PT has decided to present Luis Inacio da Silva, known as "Lula", as their candidate for the next presidential elections. Opinion polls today give him scores of between 20% and 30%, which would put him in second place, if not in first place in the first round of a two-round system of voting (similar to the
The right has no more than six months to find a credible national candidate. For the time being, Lionel Brizola — ex-governor of Rio and leader of the Democratic Labour Party (PDT), the heir of traditional Brazilian populism, who is affiliated to the social-democratic Second International - seems to be the sole charismatic candidate challenging Lula.
Brizola's handicaps and contradictions
Brizola's handicaps, however, are not minor ones. On one hand, while he has significant local bases in Rio and in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, he cannot rely nationally on a well-oiled and well-implanted apparatus. And in a country the size of Brazil, these things are decisive. On the other hand, Brizola, who was previously exiled by the dictatorship, has some formidable rightwing enemies. So he will have big problems assembling all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle around his candidacy in the second round of the elections.
Brizola claims that he will withdraw in favour of Lula if it is a race between the latter and the right wing in the second round. But, at the end of the day, in order to present himself as a credible candidate against Lula and to offer the necessary guarantees to the right, he will be obliged to take a harder line against the Workers Party and, via the PT, against workers' demands and the social movements. He has already begun to do this in his pre-election campaign, at the risk of paying an electoral price for it.
Having been entrusted with new responsibilities, the Workers Party is also entering an exciting — but difficult - stage of its history. It must simultaneously lead explosive social movements (agrarian struggles and the recent general strike [see following
article], for example), demonstrate a capacity for efficiently running huge municipalities like São Paulo, and wage a determined campaign in the presidential elections with a minimal, but not zero, chance of winning.
The PT can only do all this coherently on the basis of a democratic and anti-imperialist programme that breaks with the bourgeoisie — non-payment of the debt, which is strangling social budgets; a radical agrarian reform; index-linked wages; urban reform and so on. Beyond this, its capacity to resist foreseeable blackmail, threats and sabotage will depend above all on the strength of its links with the social movements and the prestige it acquires in the eyes of the other Latin American peoples.
Outside of the question of programme, another problem will be whether or not to desist in the second round in the event of a run-off between Brizola and the right (the reappearance of an old hopeful like Janio Quadros is not excluded). In such a situation, there will be a strong temptation to vote for the "lesser evil", including in the PT's ranks — although for the time being the aggressiveness of Brizola's campaign is arousing PT "party patriotism".
All these questions will be discussed and probably decided at a special PT congress planned for June, to give a real send-off to the presidential campaign. *
BRAZIL
Brazil paralyzed by