A left alliance in Lisbon
THE right-wing Social Democratic Party (PSD), which has held the majority in parliament for eight years, lost in the municipal elections of
December 12. On the national level, the Socialist Party (PS) outflanked the PSD by 4%. While the PS won in 127 municipalities, the PSD took 116,
International Viewpoint #252 January 1994 improvement in the relationship of forces.
The third change - the first being that of the coalition's composition, the second that of the programme — was in the campaign itself. The entire campaign was the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) 49, and 13 went to a small rightwing party.
International Viewpoint spoke with Francisco Louça, a representative of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR, Portuguese section of the
Fourth International), about the election results. The PSR itself was part of a left-wing slate which ran 634 candidates in the 15 biggest cities. Out of the 32 elected in Lisbon, three were from the PSR.
INTERVIEW — 23 December 1993
HE "Por Lisboa" (For
T
Lisbon) coalition received 60% of the votes in Lisbon. Can you tell us about its political composition, about the process that led to the single slate, and about the campaign's programme?
Let me begin with the history of this coalition. This is the second time it has run in elections; it won the municipal elections in Lisbon in 1989 following a debate within the PS. The municipality of Lisbon, the country's main urban centre, is decisive from an electoral point of view. It had been dominated for 12 years by the rightwing, and there was a debate within the left, especially in the PS, on how a winning ticket could be put together. The PS
General Secretary Jorge Sampaeo decided to run himself as the candidate and proposed the idea of a coalition to the PCP.
That was quite innovative because in general the PS refused - and continues to do so everywhere but in Lisbon — any kind of electoral alliance with the PCP.
But this was a pre-condition because together the PCP and the PS had enough votes to defeat the right-wing coalition. Four years later, the coalition was made between the PS, the PCP and a small allied party actually created by the PCP, the
Greens.
Four years ago, the PSR proposed that it be a central player in the slate and ran a candidate for the municipal assembly; he was elected and for four years he was in the municipal assembly. There was a
30 debate about the four years, on the programme, on the composition of the coalition itself, and on the kind of campaign to run.
There was a balance sheet of the four years in municipal government. It was spelled out that a rectification had to be made in the direction of developing the social mobilisation around the major problems. The first four years were devoted to the work of changing the global priorities set out by the right-wing, and to emergency works. Now we know that we should have begun to organise more around social priorities such as public transport, and reorganise in a thoroughgoing fashion the relationship of transit to
For this campaign there was a change in the overall programme. The PS and the PCP decided to continue the coalition, and proposed to the other partners, such as the PSR, to participate. That said, the PSR — which was for the idea of the coalition, and had defended for a long time the idea of such a programmatic change — set down as a condition the transformation of the legal status of the coalition, in the direction of openly incorporating all the other parties in the coalition as fully equal partners. This meant that it would become a PS-PCP-PSR-Green coalition, along with another small party allied to the PCP, the UDP.
Thus, the five parties put forward slates. There was also a change in the composition following the victory. For example, the PSR has gone from one to three municipal deputies, out of a total of 32 left-wing deputies — which is a real coordinated by the five coalition partners, including the contact meetings with the population. It was a really dynamic campaign, reflecting the evolution I have described.
Just imagine that the right-wing, which lost the last elections with 45 to 47% of the vote, now has only 25%, against the left's 60%.
How do you explain the existence of this coalition, which is a rather unique case in all of Europe?
Yes, it is a unique case — in Portugal, too. The PS general secretary was in a very difficult situation in 1989. He was being marginalised within the party. He is a leader with origins in a far-left organisation, one of the main far-left organisations in Portugal, where he was a member until 1975. He is someone who had very strong ties with the left, and the intellectual core of the party was more favourable to alliances with other sectors of the left, and was not very open to the classical social democratic notion of the PS and social democracy being the only acceptable and credible left-wing force.
Above all, however, there were electoralist calculations at work. Until 1989, the PCP had more votes than the PS in Lisbon — a highly politicised city with large working class strongholds. So when the general secretary decided to attempt an electoral coup, he knew that if there were a second left-wing slate headed up by the PCP he might be able to get more votes than the PCP, but would never be able to win against a right-wing united against him.
So the only solution was a great leap forward, that of making this coalition, so he made it. It was an exception in the country; they had never gone in for coalitions of this type anywhere else, and it is even probable that this coalition will not come together again in the future. In any event, it was clear that after one experience the coalition is made, and it was very difficult to re-elect the same president under the banner of one single party — so
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PORTUGAL
International Viewpoint #252 January 1994 desemprego Segura it was almost unavoidable that the coalition would come together for a second time.
What do the three PSR deputies plan on doing?
We already have a significant amount of experience in the municipal assembly; the deputy we had for four years intervened generally on budgetary questions, on the main problems, and in the big political debates in the assembly that meets every week. He had the very democratic right to form an independent parliamentary group himself, and therefore the time required to make a serious political intervention. His general approach was to give critical support to the municipal government, but in an independent fashion; there was no compromise with the government.
He carried out his own parliamentary activity on the major themes of the day, and which have some relationship with our political campaigns — for example, around the question of racism and violence against women, subjects that have been the focus of our work over the last few years.
The three new deputies can intervene on a much wider scale, and they will constitute a parliamentary group that will conduct its relations with the municipal government in the same way, along the same criteria - that is, autonomous and critical. The difference is that now they will have an enhanced ability to set the agenda in the assembly discussions, and to ibe formulate resolutions touching on subjects related to political campaigns led by the
PSR in its extra-parliamentary work, which themselves determine our political intervention in the assembly.
Restructuring is planned in various sectors, such as shipbuilding, steel, the national airline, and so forth. Can you briefly discuss the social and trade union situation in Portugal?
Portugal is a specific case in Europe. Formally, the unemployment rate is still very low compared to the European average. It was about 5%, and now with the wave of job cuts, it might be as high as 7 or 8%. But there is a lot of hidden unemployment and very poorly paid employment. However, there is not the kind of dramatic social tension that one finds in other countries, such as Spain or Ireland. And there has been about six years of economic growth, which has enabled the government to redistribute revenues among the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie.
All this has created a situation of pressure on the working class movement. This is generally a favourable social situation for the government, one which allows it room for maneouvre and for initiativetaking. The small change indicated by these elections is that after one year of recession there is already a movement towards punishing the government and towards protest.
We all know that the response on the level of the different sectors to the restructuring is always very difficult when there is the threat of unemployment hanging over an enterprise, when the sector in question is in the process of shutting down. Strikes don't really represent much of a threat to the bosses in such cases.
So there is a need for a social mobilisation, and the trade unions are too weak to organise it. The social movement which does, however, have the ability to act is the student movement. The government has had an absolute majority for eight years, and the right-wing had great influence within youth. But they are in the process of quickly losing that influence among youth, with a huge student movement developing around the question of student fees and conditions for study. There are massive demonstrations in the country of a kind that hasn't been seen for a long time, and which took place even during the election campaign. The student movement constitutes a very important radicalisation, which has also influenced the working class movement and the whole social situation in the country.
Prime Minister Mario Soares replaced four of his ministers ten days before the elections. There is a growing crisis within the government. Is he about to dissolve the national assembly and call new elections?
No, the ministers that were replaced were in those sectors affected by the social mobilisation. In the health sector there was a doctors' strike on the same day that the minister was replaced. And of course there was the minister of education who was a casualty of the major demonstrations I mentioned. Then there was the finance minister, who was made the fall guy for the recession.
Soares planned to take serious measures to address the economic woes. But now, after the municipal elections, he has quickly backtracked. After all, in spite of the defeat suffered in the big cities, the ruling PSD only fell the PS by some 3 to 4.5%. So it is actually a very small difference, which does not justify bringing the anticipated general elections forward. It is even possible that the dramatisation of the situation by the government will make a PSD victory inevitable
The left must develop an entirely different strategy, based on social mobilisation and the organisation of public debates — to reorient those social sectors looking for new solutions. *
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