•  Brazil: Scandals Hinder Lula’s Administration
•  An Interview with a Founding Member of the Workers Party

Brazil: Scandals Hinder Lula’s Administration
by David Kane

The Brazilian government has been racked by a series of corruption scandals that many social movements--church groups; NGOs; unions; farmers, Afro-Brazilians, womens' and students' organizations--worry may result in conservative parties increasing their power within the coalition that supports the president’s Workers’ Party (PT). President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), a founding member of the PT, was elected in 2002 after losing three previous elections for the same position. In order to gain political support necessary for the election, the PT formed alliances with conservative parties, which has made it difficult to maintain coalition of forces within the government.
In its first two and a half years in power, the Lula government has implemented a mixture of progressive and conservative policies. On the international front, it has maintained a more independent posture in relation to free trade accords like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), while working to increase South-South relationships through stronger ties with African, Asian and other Latin American countries. Internally, however, it has passed a series of structural (neoliberal) reforms that the PT historically had fought against, such as the partial privatization of social security and bankruptcy reform, and is working for other unpopular reforms of education, workers’ rights and unions. This dichotomy of actions represents the internal struggles taking place within the government between the coalition forces. Social movements are concerned that, as a result of these recent scandals, the conservative forces will increase their force within the government.

The first scandal, which came to light in 2003, involved a trusted assistant to Jose Dirceu, the president’s chief of staff, who extorted money from a clandestine lottery director for political campaigns for members of the PT and allied parties. The government was able to avoid a Congressional investigation of the case, but the PT’s image as an ethical and honest party was tarnished, and Dirceu’s reputation was damaged.

A second scandal began earlier this year when a video on national television showed an executive of the postal system, Mauricio Marinho, receiving money from a private company in exchange for contracts with the postal service. During the video, Marinho detailed a bribery scheme, supposedly orchestrated by Roberto Jefferson, president of the PTB, an allied party of the Lula government, which involved other state-run companies. In a television interview about the accusations, Jefferson, in an attempt to deflect attention from his involvement, introduced a new scandal saying that the PT, since the beginning of its time in office, has been paying close to $12,500 per month to as many as 101 representatives and senators from two allied parties, the Progressive Party (PP) and Liberal Party (PL), for them to vote in favor of PT initiatives.

The resulting scandal has dominated the political agenda. No one has strongly denied the accusations and many politicians and aides have commented that they had heard about the illegal payments, but have no proof. Congress already has begun an investigation of the postal scandal and will start an investigative panel of the paying off of legislators.

The first victim of the crisis was Jose Dirceu, Lula’s chief of staff and longtime personal friend, who left his position to return to his position as representative of the state of Sao Paulo to which he was elected in 2002. Dirceu was a strong center-left voice within the schizophrenic Cabinet. Some, like Minister of the Environment Marina Silva, represent the PT’s historical progressive past, while others such as Roberto Rodrigues (Agriculture), Luiz Furlan (Development, Industry and External Commerce) and Antonio Palocci (Economic Policy) favor strong neoliberal policies. The president of the Central Bank is Henrique Meirelles, a former president of the Bank of Boston, Brazil’s largest private creditor. With conservatives in such key positions, the loss of Dirceu was especially worrisome to social movements.

While the scandals have lowered Brazilians’ confidence in the Lula government in opinion polls, the percentage of people rating the government as good or great has fallen from 41 percent to 35 percent since the beginning of the year--many believe that Lula himself may have been unaware of the payments being made to the legislators. When he learned about the latest scandal, aides report that he cried and ordered that the payments to legislators be stopped. Lula continues to be seen positively by the majority of the Brazilian people and as a hope for fundamental change by the social movements. In response to the scandal, over 50 movements released a “Letter to the Brazilian People” in which they defend Lula, demand a full investigation of the corruption scandals and punishment of the guilty parties, and call for a series economic policy changes such as lowering interest rates (currently 19.75 percent, the highest in the world), redirecting part of Brazil’s debt payment to social spending; and political reforms such as public financing of elections, increased public overview of state agencies and the use of direct voting through referendums and plebiscites. The letter calls on all Brazilian citizens to go to the streets in favor of these demands. As Joao Pedro Stedile, spokesperson for the movements, said, “The only certainty of the possibility for changes … is if workers organize independently, mobilize and struggle for changes. Never has any government given anything for free.”

(Source: Maryknoll News Notes)

An Interview with a Founding Member of the Workers Party

In the last two weeks, Jose Genuino, the president of the PT, Silvio Pereira, secretary-general, and Delubio Soares, treasurer, also resigned their positions within the Workers´ Party amidst charges of corruption. 

The following is an excerpt from an interview that Brasil de Fato conducted with Chico de Oliveira, one of the founders of the PT and a sociology professor at the University of São Paulo. He is also executive coordinator of the Center for the Study of Citizens´ Rights, USP: 

Brasil de Fato (BF): Why in Brazil did the Workers´ Party grow so quickly?
Chico de Oliveira: In the history of leftist parties in the world, it usually takes 100 years for them to be transformed into popular political parties. The PT took only three years, from the time that we published the first “Letter to the Brazilian People”. The PT grew rapidly because the military dictatorship mobilized social movements. It became the largest political party machine of the country. The PSDB (Social-Democratic Party of Brazil) is a machine of the plutocracy that does not have a popular base. The PT today is not the same as the original PT; political choices within the party were made.

BF: Were these political choices made before the PT assumed power or after?
Chico de Oliveira: Assuming power is something of a disaster because it exposes ruptures within the party. The rupture began in 2002 and problems created by the bureaucratic organization were exposed. The PT is a formidable bureaucratic organization. Beginning with city councilors to the top politicians, each one has a body of advisers. This already creates a mass of material interests that is not ideology, but rather interests and jobs. The PT employs a large mass of people and this influences the party. 

BF: Didn't the PT ever have a plan for the nation?
Chico de Oliveira: No! Those in the PT who had a plan for the nation were those who came from a history of armed struggle during the dictatorship such as Jose Dirceu and Dilma Roussef. It was a socialist plan of transformation. In the formation of the PT, the national plan of the Catholics was an ethical plan. A third force, the principle one in the beginning of the party, were the 
labor union leaders, who did not have a plan for the country. The new unions today are very apolitical, even anti-political. Lula was very anti-political. In 1974, he said that what interested the worker was a salary, not politics.

BF: What is the importance of a national plan? What is the difference between a national plan and a plan of power?
Chico de Oliveira: What is important in a national plan is not the political party but rather the formation of the nation. A plan of power places power before the national interest. Thus, in the measure in which the PT grew and bureaucratized, power passed in front of the national plan and became an end in itself. 

BF: What does the right want?
Chico de Oliveira: Two things: power and money. They have money but do not have much power. The political right today is the PSDB. 

BF: But they have the Central Bank and the Treasury Department, what else do they want?
Chico de Oliveira: This is very serious because a very grave phenomenon has happened in that the economy of Brazil has colonized its policies. Policies do not exist anymore. There are economic goals and growth-maintenance. Henrique Meirelles is the head of the Central Bank, not because he belongs to the PSDB, but because he is an important link in the chain connecting creditors with financial capital in general. In the capitalist world, politics does not have importance.

BF: Then, what is there to do?
Chico de Oliveira: Politics. Exactly because it is not important for capitalists, it has to be for us. We have to invent new forms. Political parties are eroding quickly. Within this colonization of politics by the economy, the parties are the principle victims. The debates that we are seeing today about corruption have as their objective the discussion of government jobs. According to this logic, it is important to have a strong person in a strong position, in order to administer funds of the “surplus economy”. If you are not a property owner or living in the world of big money, how do you have a voice within society? Acting politically. I doubt that the old forms are effective. We have to find news ways of doing politics.

BF: One of the arguments of the PT to justify the retreat of the government from a leftist project was the correlation of forces unfavorable to the left. Is this true? Wasn´t another economic policy possible? 
Chico de Oliveira: This is nonsense, because if you only make policies that the correlation of forces allow, one only makes conservative policies. Policies are exactly the only means available to correct the asymmetries of power that the economy creates. In a capitalist system, power is asymmetrically built and policies are the only way to correct this. 

BF: Why did the government opt for this type of governance instead of looking toward the social movements?
Chico de Oliveira: My thesis is in an article that will be published in a book called, “The Age of Indecision”. There occurred a great transformation in society, capital and property, and also in relation to the state. The PT never understood this. The theoretical weakness of the PT is this. The PT evaluated the Government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso as one that was anti-nationalist and for privatization. For many in the PT, all that was need was good will. The PT never understood that Fernando Henrique turned the country upside-down and that privatization of 15% of the GNP changed everything in a way that is very difficult to control. This type of privatization was done on a scale without comparison in the world. So Argentina did a similar process and the results were disastrous. Brazil changed greatly and PT did not take this seriously enough. Privatizations changed the structure of the economic property of the bourgeoisie, changed their relationship with their workers and with the state. The state lost a powerful arm to construct economic policy. 

BF: Did the public-private relation changed with privatization?
Chico de Oliveira: The private sector advanced and removed from the state the elements necessary to make economic policy, industrial policy and investments. The function of the private sector today is absolute. It´s a very complicated dictatorship because it functions within the legal system. The function of the state is on the periphery and it is to manage the country´s permanent crises by social policies. Within this system, there is no way to redistribute resources or income in Brazil, so the government invented policies like “Family Grants” or “Zero Hunger” that don´t function to redistribute income but focalize and maintain poverty. You do not take anyone out of poverty with a grant of $20.00 per month. This is a joke. Those who are beneficiaries of the “Family Grants” do not change their social class. These programs don´t diminish inequality or eliminate poverty.

BF: How do the people who believed in and elected Lula feel about this torrent of denouncements of corruption?
Chico de Oliveira: The identification of many people with Lula is not easy to destroy. Lula is an enormous fraud and I don´t think that he will be reelected. One part of the population will remain faithful to Lula but not to the PT. Social and working classes are dissolving. In Brazil, how can you have a unified social class with an unemployment rate of 20% and 50% of workers in the informal market. How is it possible to unite in a social class? What is the institutional policy that could take people out of the informal market? It is tragic. The best metaphor for this situation is lava flowing from a volcano. It is a mass without form that is called the informal market. How do politicians represent something without form? 

BF: What can we do?
Chico de Oliveira: We have to find new forms of action. Not even the word “revolution” makes sense. What does this word mean to someone who lives in a favela? It is practically another language, one that few speak. Revolution does not seem plausible for someone living in a slum. For a politician to act politically, it must be plausible for your promise to be fulfilled. It has to be plausible for me and for you that equality can exist. It is not necessary that it exists but plausible that it can exist. So, is it plausible for a person who lives in the favela of Rochinha? Can he or she act with the hope as though there is equality? No. Thus, when equality is not plausible, the survival instinct transforms into a private war. 
The worst damage of the Lula government is exactly this. It is in the area in which it is plausible that society can reform and achieve certain objectives. If not, the area of politics disappears and it is colonized by the economy in a perverse way. It becomes the area of the immediate: you have to survive for that day, and that´s it. There is no project for the future. Thus, you rob, kill, and assault. There is nothing to lose and today you won´t be hungry.
The state did not disappear. What disappeared is the political community. Before Lula unified everything into a “Family Grant”, there was even a “ Kitchen Gas Credit”. The state is present in all of this which creates a vast assistance system that meets immediate needs. As politicians lost contact with reality and were colonized by the economy, they no longer decide important questions but rather decide about how to distribute for misery. Political life becomes a band of gangs disputing fiercely as to whom assumes control. 
Lula is a product of the crisis provoked by Fernando Henrique. He could have acted differently. He is a charismatic leader of the PT but there is nothing radical in him. We made a mistake.

(Source: Brasil de Fato, July 7-13, 2005)


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