Peoples' budgets
International Viewpoint #251 December 1993
Such a process would probably create the conditions for the establishment of a highly progressive fiscal policy, which would make the rich pay much more in taxes and which would have the necessary popular support. We will try to create a political and social force (based on the most organised sectors of the working class) to re-orientate the economy.
The above is the way to fight the capitalist market and system of private profit, without succumbing to State bureaucratisation. We have to build a different kind of State, one which is subject to popular control. This would constitute a change to the present logic of the economy, and would allow for development based on the creation of a internal mass market, as described in the PT's Guiding Principles (see pp. 18-22). The creation of an internal market would mean the adoption of a model of development is aimed at the staisfaction of the consumption needs of the domestic population.
Such a model would allow both economic growth and the distribution of wealth. It would allow for the creation of an economy which is run according to the priorities laid out by Mandel: the elimination of hunger, the guarantee of the right to housing, health care and education, the re-distribution of land to peasants and the elimination of unemployment.
It would also be a way to begin to go beyond the capitalist economy, without adhering to an obsolete faith in the State. The break with capitalism will not be determined by the quantity of nationalisations, but by the degree of popular control over the formulation of economic policy and the re-distribution of wealth.
### Revolutionary
Without doubt, this is a revolutionary path - the changing of the economy based on a radical democratisation of society. Such democratisation is a fundamental aspect of a democratic revolution which will transform the base of power and so involve serious confrontations with the bourgeoisie.
Our conception is compatible with the Marxist vision of the process of building socialism. In the long term it will eliminate regulation by the market and the State will wither away as it is reabsorbed by society. It is also more adapted to the PT's project for socialism. It could be a decisive weapon in giving cohesion to our struggle against neo-liberal ideologies and to our struggle for hegemony. *
ONE year after Fernando Collor -the first president to be elected by direct universal sufferage since 1960 — was thrown out, Brazil has been hit by a new wave of accusations and inquiries into corruption, placing the issue at the centre of national politics. Recently it was revealed that deputies from the Federal Budget Commission were involved in an influence-peddling racket. This has stopped dead in its tracks the constitutional reform begun in October by the right wing, threatens the survival of the country's biggest party, the Militant Party of Brazilian Democracy (PMDB), and signals the end of the already teetering Itamar government. BETI BÚRIGO & RAUL PONT São Paulo, 23 November 1993
HE above is happening on the eve of Presidential elections in which the Workers' Party's (PT) Lula already unbeatable. In a recent opinion poll he was favoured by thirty-three percent. The closest contender was preferred by only sixteen percent.
The declarations of the Assessor of the Budget Commission, which is responsible for discussion and amendments concerning the federal budget, led to the setting up of a Commission of Parliamentary Inquiry (CPI) and paralysed the process of constitutional reform. This process was the spearhead of a rightwing offensive to consolidate the implementation of the neo-liberal project, paralysing a future popular democratic government and preventing the mobilisation of democratic organisations, social movements and leftwing parties.
Even though the CPI had as its target those deputies accused of receiving bribes, the accusations also involved the government and publicly exposed the principle beneficiaries of corruption -the big construction entrepreneurs who, during the Collor affair, managed to avoid being charged. As for the deputies, they approved amendments to the budget which endorsed useless projects or projects which were never completed.
Further, pre-determined companies would receive contracts for public works. The costs were usually over-pried, particularly as smaller firms woul e sub-contracted at market rat
In spite of the folklore around the affair of the "seven dwarves" - the members of the Budget Commission linked to the main accused, João Alves -and efforts by the rightwing to sacrifice three or four to save the rest, the accusations have already tainted leading figures in all the major parties, except the PT and the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), which was already tainted by the central role it plays in the government.
### Tireless
PT deputies had already denounced the corruption of the Budget Commission in 1991. Their demand for a commission of inquiry was unsuccessful at that time thanks to the tireless efforts of Ibsen Pinheiro - one of the present accused - and Mauro Benevides. Both these men are members of the Militant Party of Brazilian Democracy (PMDB), are respectively Presidents of the House and of the Senate, and were previously said to be above suspicion.
However, in order to pretend that there had been some change, the number of members of the Budget Commission was changed to a hundred and twenty deputies and rotation established for the presidency. The farce continued; in the 1992 budget, more than 70 thousand individual amendments were presented.
The PT and democratic and progressive organisations are currently centring on the demand for rigourous investigation of the accusations, and for an extension of the remit of the CPI. The PT is not ruling out the possibility of elections being called earlier than the selected date of October 1994. President Itamar's spokesperson, faced with the growing crisis, has also referred to this possibility.
15
International Viewpoint #251 December 1993
While the rightwing is trying to ridicule the allegations of corruption, by calling the CPI the "United Workers Central". , progressive sectors should introduce concrete proposals for social control over public resources.
Beyond the punishment of both corrupters and corrupt, other measures should be taken: no further public money for private enterprises masquerading as social projects, and respect for objective criteria (shortcomings in resources, population, wealth) in deciding public investment in the regions. All this will not, however, put an end to corruption.
Effective democratisation of the distribution of public resources requires that antagonistic interests be clearly identified, and a fight waged for the interests of the majority. The current mechanisms for government obscure these antagonisms and remove the population from any real decision-making.
The presence of the PT in a dozen municipal governments has allowed a concrete debate around these questions and has avoided a situation in which the people feel powerless.
The municipal PT administrations have initiated a process of direct popular participation for the drawing up of the budget - which is really a counterpoint to the federal budgetary process, overrun as it is by private entrepreneurs. By going beyond the limits of representative democracy, this process has established another basis for negotiations for the allocation of resources and the defining of priorities, so as to win space for the defence of working people's inter-
In Porto Alegre, where the People's Front is led by the PT and Tarso Genro was elected Mayor after Olivio Dutra's four-year mandate had expired, there have been five years of experience with a participatory budget. To prepare the 1994 budget, thousands of people participated in the debates and the designation of works, in the election of representatives for the sixteen regions which make up the People's Budget Council, and of the seven-hundred delegates responsible for regional organisation, evaluation of works, and surveillance and criticism of the municipal government in the event of delays or non-implementation of decisions. The People's Budget Council formulates, along with advisers and others from the administration, the legislation which will be adopted by the Municipal Council.
By participating directly in the investment decision-making process for 16 the city, and in the debates and struggles around the general orientation of public policy, the organised population is well informed and familiar with the accounts and functioning of the administration. They appropriate the city and its resources and fully exercise their citizenship. They have broken with the traditional clientelism that gives mayors and municipal councillors the role of intermediary protectors; they organise themselves, increasingly making irrelevant the initial work of the municipal government team. The direct participation of citizens in the region's assemblies does not weaken the neighbourhood association, which have initial discussions and formulate demands. In Porto Alegre, more than five-hundred community associations, with leaders who have different or no political affiliations, participate in this process.
In 1994, the trade unions should now organise workers' assemblies on different themes. The combination of thematic and regional assemblies would contribute to creating a more rounded, global appreciation of the problems raised by community leaders, who at the same time help build a vision beyond the corporatism which can often characterise the ideas of representatives from the workplace.
### Different vision
Organised activity by the people places pressure on and stimulates the municipal administrations, imposing a different rhythm and a different vision of responsibilities to that of career civil servants. However, the administrations are not always in a position to respond to the demands for efficiency in maintenance or construction. Without development in the population of an awareness of the obstacles which reflect the present relationship of forces in society, they can become frustrated and lose hope — which can be exploited by the conservative rightwing and bourgeois press.
Certain sectors have sought to institutionalise the participatory experience. In Porto Alegre, the municipal administration argues that the strength and value of the participatory budget lies in its spontaneous character, together with there being no delegation of power, and its rules being agreed jointly by the social movements and municipal government. To institutionalise the process would lead to its subordination to a hostile majority in the municipal coun cil, and imprison it in rules leading to legal conflicts which would interrupt the debates and the annual nature of the process.
The experience has resulted in more investment, in spite of the cost of maintaining the previous structure, and the losses linked to the massive number of personnel and the remuneration of municipal councillors. A new relationship with the public authorities is being built, which is also relevant to the state administrations and the Union.!
Parties in the People's Front must play a dominant role in the politicisation of whole sectors of society, in the search for an alternative to the dominant capitalist legal conception of formal equality in citizenship.
While keeping our faith in the old utopian vision, it would be no exaggeration to say that these experiences constitute the embryo of a new conception of the public administration, and indeed of the State itself. *
1. Brazil is a federation of twenty-three states, regulated by a constitution similar to that of the United States.
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