The outcome of these elections can be considered as the fruition of the 'liberalisation' scenario that was the aim of the old strategy adopted by the regime. This scheme provided for a bourgeois opposition and a 'responsible' workers opposition. This plan had been disrupted by the emergence of the Workers Party (PT), but the relative elec toral defeat of this party and the election of Brizola has relaunched the former perspective.
The bourgeoisie urgently needs to establish a mechanism for a social pact with a house-broken opposition that controls at least part of the mass movement. This is a job that the labour bureaucracy in the Brazilian Communist Party, and in the Maoist Brazilian Communist Party is ready to fill.
of the elections in Brazil:
Only a few days after the elections, the government was once again renegotiating Brazil's enormous debt of 90 billion dollars with the International Monetary defeat of the dictatorship
Fund. Likewise, Reagan promised aid. But the social consequences of the conditions demanded by international capitalism - an end to the six-monthly adjustment of wages, and attacks on the social security system - are already evident.
Although the Brazilian bourgeosie has
Daniel JEBRAC General elections took place in Brazil on Sunday December 14, 1982. These elec- ship. tions brought a clear defeat for the party in power, the Social Democratic Party (PDS), which lost its majority in the Federal Chamber. It won the governorships of 12 states, as against 9 won by the main opposition party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). The governorship of the politically most important state, Rio de Janeiro, was taken by the leaders of the Democratic Workers Party, (PDT) Leonel Brizola.
The opposition was victorious in the most significant states; those with the greatest population and the most industry, which are economically decisive. For example, in the southern state of Sao Paulo, which produces 40 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, the PDS won only 25 per cent of the vote. Overall the opposition captured 60 per cent of the vote.
The victory of Leonel Brizola, against a candidate of both the PDS and PMDB, was significant. As the most consistent bourgeois oppositionist, his election was a clear condemnation of the dictator-
Although the results were a defeat for the PDS, they give the bourgeoisie an increased room for manoeuvre. The elections themselves imparted a certain legitimacy to the regime, which was reaffirmed around that time by the visit of President Reagan, who promised increased financial aid.
The opposition governors have not organised themselves as an opposition grouping, and indeed are all ready and willing to negotiate with the government. Indeed, Brizola himself openly stated that reconciliation is a duty'. All the opposition governors have felt moved to praise the president-general Figueiredo as the. guarantor of the liberalisation process.
Thus, the bourgeoisie now find themselves with a more diversified and flexible system of political domination. The PMDB is becoming more and more a party of the centre-right - supported by the big industrialists, and political figures come out of the elections in a better position to deal with the situation, it is still far from having achieved a controlled disengagement from dictatorship. There are strong internal tensions within dif ferent sections of the bourgeoisie and its political parties.
The political institutions remain unstable, the trade-union question is not sorted out. The PMDB, from now on in power in several important states, will be exposed to strong internal pressures. Its right wing is already thinking about a liberal party that could act as a prop to the PDS in a future coalition. Others would not be unsympathetic to the idea of a social-democratic party, which Leonel Brizola has already put forward.
REASONS FOR THE RELATIVE
FAILURE OF THE PT
The PT is a young party, born in the workers struggles of 1978/79. Its launch was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm.
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Lula, leader of the PT and candidate for governor of Sao Paulo (DR) The outcome
as two peas in a pod', which is true in the deputy has publicly said that he thinks
The membership rose rapidly to 300,000 and it waged a successful campaign for legal recognition International Viewpoint, No 17 November 15, 1982). This initial success brought about an overestimation of how much it could achieve in these elections.
Overall the PT received some 1.5 million votes. The large majority were in the state of Sao Paulo - 1.1 million. Here, the PT received 10 per cent of the vote, the national average was around 3 per cent. The PT now has around 10 federal deputies, 6 of whom are from the state of Sao Paulo. It has some member in state parliaments, and a good number of municipal councillors.
The party won the mayorship of Diadema, a town in Sao Paulo's strongly working-class suburbs known collectively TRABALHADORES as the ABC (Santo Andre, Sao Bernardo, Sao Caetano, and Diadema). However, in some states the number of votes cast for the PT did not even equal the number of
Because of its newness and its lack of a stable organised apparatus, it has not yet been able to firmly implant itself amongst the working class. Thus, its supporters are still very much under the pressure from the centuries-old traditions of patronage voting. WEAKNESSES IN THE PT CAMPAIGN
The electoral mechanisms of the regime also worked against the PT. The tied vote system made it compulsory to vote for candidates of the same party for all posts. In many smaller and less politicised towns, the PT could not put up local candidates, so voters there did not get a chance to vote for PT candidates for state posts. In the cities, was a strong pressure to cast a 'useful' to strengthen the recognised opposition so as to maximize the opposition to the dictatorship.
Thus, after 18 years of dictatorship, there were objective reasons for the PT's lack of success. But there were also weaknesses in the PT's campaign itself.
The more moderate and electoralist sector of the party are blaming the 'radicalism' of the campaign for the failure. But, the results in Diadema explode these accusations. The newly-elected PT mayor of Diadema is a well-known militant trade-union activist who makes no secret of his radical views. And he waged a vigorous campaign.
The PT Campaign suffered from a certain propagandism. Slogans such as 'A vote for a worker, or "Those who know how to work know how to govern' were important for affirming the independent class nature of the PT's campaign. But they did not provide clear practical responses to the crisis, or focus clearly on the question of the dictatorship. Often PT speakers referred to the PDS and PMDB as 'alike
'Power to the workers' (DR) last analysis but diverted attention from focusing on opposition to the dictator-
One of the most important weaknesses was that the PT was not sufficiently organisationally and politically consolidated to avoid cetrifugal tendencies. Only in some areas, like Diadema, was the campaign centralised, elsewhere they tended to be rather individualistic.
The election results shattered myths about the PT; that it is supported by the Church, and that it is a party of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie attracted by fashionable ideas. that Catholic fellowships were involved in launching the PT. But at the time of the vote, the Church hierarchy clearly opted for supporting the responsible bourgeois opposition. And the best results the PT obtained were in the strong industrial concentrations.
A NEW STAGE FOR THE PT
The November 15 elections mark the opening of a new political stage in Brazil, and for the PT as well.
The outcome of the elections changes the relationship of forces within the working class in favour of the collaborationist sector. This will bring increased pressure on the PT.
Bourgeois commentators have talked
"vanguardism' of the PT. For example the Minister of the Economy, Deltim Neto, stated in an interview with the newpaper Folha do Sao Paulo, 'I have always said that what causes the most problems for the working class is its
Without its vanguard, the working class really would be masters of
These pressures have made themselves felt within the PT itself, particularly within its small parliamentary fraction.
to build local units for political discussions and organisation is a waste of time, and useless for electoral campaigns. Another has publicly blamed the radicalism of the campaign for its lack of success.
Intransigent reaffirmations by Lula and other leaders of the class independence of the PT, and that the party is based on the self-organisation of the workers not electoralism, are not enough to stop those who want to dissolve the PT into an electoral front or a tail of the bourgeois opposition.
Nor will it be sufficient just to discuss a balance sheet of the election campaign. It is necessary also to take up the failures within the trade-union movement - the lack of progress in building a unified class-struggle current, the impotence of this current in the national students congress, where divided slates allowed the reformists to win power.
The PT is not strongest on the electoral front; it draws its strength from the mass movement. To overcome its weakto work consistently to build its rank-and-file units, 'nuclei, within the workers movement. But it cannot just base itself on localised workers strug.
The PT has to develop a strategy for dealing with the political crisis and the politics of austerity. It has to have an overall strategy for fighting to build an independent and united workers movement. A similar orientation is necessary with respect to the students', peasants, women's movement, and social movements in general.
The PT cannot remain a small vanguard party, rather on the sidelines of the political arena, it has to develop the political clarity that will enable it to become a coherent and active force. The revolutionary currents that have been in the party since its foundation have a crucial role to play in ensuring that it develops this political clarity political programme to give it the capacity to fight against the dictatorship.
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