Peru / Brazil *
Primaries
in Porto
Alegre
THE primary elections to choose the Workers' Party (PT) candidate for the mayorship of Porto Alegre, Brazil's "capital of democracy" in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, took place in a tense climate on April 9, 2000. LUÍZ MARQUES*
HE contenders were the current mayor Raul Pont, the first assistant José Fortunati and former mayor Tarso Genro.1
The process mobilized the PT's militants and sympathizers and contributed to politically legitimate the choice of Tarso Genro. The PT thus comes out reinforced for an electoral confrontation in which the conservative camp is finding it difficult to define its candidates. The sad aspect of the story is that, in various aspects, the political victory of the PT choosing its representative for the October election went hand in hand with the risk of a serious cultural defeat in relation to the fashion of making policy followed by the right-wing in our country.
### Seduction
The processes of seduction of the electorate used to accumulate votes through the transport of voters in rented buses and paid meals, like the participation of hundreds of electoral organizers? coming from remote municipalities (in particular Gravatai) to give spectacular dimensions to the campaign and the stuffing of ballot boxes, showed that the PT in the capital of democracy is also threatened by anti-democratic methods. Such is the specter that we must vanquish in our political practice henceforth, although this specter cannot be used to challenge the cleanness and the honesty of the majority choice.
As Raoul Pont stressed after the final International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000 23
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM fsm2001@uol.com.br
Porto Alegre, Brazil
January 25-30, 2001
Association of Businesses for Citizenry; The Central Union Federation (Central Única dos Trabalhadores, CUT); IBASE
- Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis; Global Justice Center (Centro de Justiça Global); The Landless
Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST)
* Brazil calculation of the votes, "the problems which have occurred did not alter the final result, but deeply disturbed our relations in the party and must be discussed internally". Thus, the relations between militants in the party are no longer the ethical and
THE World Social Forum will be a new international arena for organizing moral anticipation of the future that we against neoliberal policies and for building economic alternatives that prioritize want for all citizens. Worse: they run the social justice.
risk of reflecting in an uncritical way the
It will take place every year in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the same mentality of "what is good is what works"
period as the World Economic Forum, which happens in Davos, Switzerland, at the stimulated by neoliberalism.
end of January. Since 1971, The World Economic Forum has played a key role in
The process of the primary elections in formulating neoliberal policies throughout the world. It's sponsored by a Swiss
Porto Alegre closed a cycle of illusions in organization that serves as a consultant to the United Nations and it's financed by the imagination of the militants of left. It is more than one thousand corporations.
not true that the PT gaucho is immunized
The World Social Forum will provide a space for building economic alternatives, against the ideological degeneration affectfor exchanging experiences and for strengthening South-North alliances between ing the left in the contemporary world,
NGOs, unions and social movements. It will also be an opportunity for developing which, in a vertiginous way, relegates princoncrete actions, to educate the public, and to mobilize civil society internationally.
ciples to the second level in the name of a
The World Social Forum developed as a consequence of a growing international pragmatism directed by a "policy of movement that has gained greater visibility since the mobilizations against the results" in accordance with the dominant
Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), which happened in Europe in 1998, rules of the game.
the demonstrations in Seattle, during the WTO meeting in 1999, and the recent protests against the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, DC, among others.
Depoliticization
For decades, these international financial institutions have been making deci-
The increasing depoliticization of the sions that affect the lives of people all over the world, without being subject to any
PT during elections — no longer characsort of democratic control. People in Third World countries, as well as the poor and terized by the necessary programmatic excluded sectors of industrialized countries suffer the devastating effects of economdebate between militants, increasingly ic globalization and the dictatorship of international institutions such as the IMF, the treated as spectators to decisions taken by
World Bank, the WTO and the governments that serve their interests.
the leadership - reveals that the global
We need to continue pressuring these institutions to be accountable to our sociadaptation of the left to the limits of capieties. Similarly, our governments must be made aware that this oversight will be talism has been facilitated by the processes exercised with increasing intensity over their actions. Many of us have struggled in legitimized by the national leadership of our own countries, regions, or cities, thinking that we were isolated. Recently, we the PT itself. The means, in this way, have begun to realize that together we can constitute a planetary archipelago of absorb and compromise the ends. In this resistance. The World Social Forum represents a new opportunity toward the conatmosphere, it is impossible that the struction of an international counter-power.
defects of the traditional policy should not
Brazil is one the countries that has been greatly affected by neoliberal policies.
affect Rio Grande do Sul, although to an
At the same time, different sectors of Brazilian society are resisting these policies, in incomparably lesser degree than other rural and urban areas, in shantytowns, factories, political parties, churches, schools,
States, like Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, etc. The richness of Brazilian grassroots organizations represents a source of inspirafor example.
tion for the development of the World Social Forum.
The difference, however, is quantita-
The Brazilian Organizing Committee invites international networks of NGOs, tive and not qualitative. In the municipaliunions and social movements to help us build the World Social Forum. We hope to ties and at state level, the PT gaucho is the receive support from organizations in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe with a administrative symbol of humanity's fight commitment to contribute with this organizing process and to send delegations to against neoliberalism in political terms,
Porto Alegre in January.
because it continues to base itself on popu-
We are asking for a special commitment from organizations in the First World to lar participation in policies opposed to prihelp funding delegations from their partner organizations in Third World countries, vatization and social exclusion. But it in order to guarantee diversity within the World Social Forum.
should not be seen as an invulnerable
The World Social Forum will represent a historic moment for organizing and fortress against the assaults of the domisocial change. Let's build it together! * nant wisdom, in cultural terms. Such is the
Brazilian Organizing Committee: The Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (Associação
Brasileira de Organizações Não Governamentais, ABONG); Action for the Taxation of International Financial best lesson of the primary elections for the
Transaction in Support of Citizens (Ação pela Tributação das Transações Financeiras em Apoio aos Cidadãos, ATTACmilitants of left: the political (in the short
BR); The Brazilian Commission of Justice and Peace (Comissão Brasileira de Justiça e Paz); CIVES - Brazilian run) and cultural (in the medium and long terms) maintenance of the socialist origins of the party, against the social-democratic inflections of which it is currently victim, is a national and not only regional task.
24 International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000