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NEWS & LETTERS, September-October 2005Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryBrazil's political crisisIn the past several months Brazil's President Lula and his Workers Party (PT) have been plunged into the worst crisis of the party's 25-year history. In June the congressman Roberto Jefferson revealed details of a scheme in which the PT has been paying legislators about $12,000 a month for their votes on key legislation, apparently since 2003. A related scandal involves the disclosure of the PT's illegal campaign financing. Two days after the vote-for-cash scandal (called the mensalao) was revealed, Jose Dirceu, Lula's chief of staff and the main leader of the majority faction in the PT (the Campo Mayoritario) that steered the party away from its working class roots, resigned. Jefferson accused him (with specific details) of being the main architect of the scheme. The president of the PT, Jose Genoino, also quit in July after he and his brother (also a politician) were caught trying to board an airplane with about $200,000 stuffed in their underwear. The congressional inquiries in the scandals, which the PT is also accused of having tried to obstruct, are ongoing. Lula himself has not been directly implicated, though it is clear that the future of his party is in doubt, as is his re-election next year. The crisis has been a huge blow to leftists throughout Latin America (and beyond) who had high hopes for Brazil's first working class president. The trend of Latin America's radical workers and ex-guerrilla fighters from the '60s and '70s coming to power after scuttling their hatred of capitalism has clearly hit a major roadblock. The bigger trajedy however is that the response so far from the critics of the Campo Mayoritario (CM) has been very weak. In late June a two-page "letter to the Brazilian people," signed by some 40 left organizations, including the Landless Workers Movement, claimed that the crisis was initiated by the "elites" in order to destabilize the government, even though the specifics of the scandals have now made clear to all that the country's traditional elites are mostly indistinguishable from the PTs. Much of the movement in Brazil has put its faith into fighting for this government, so that now there's not much of a "movement" out there that could induce Lula to return to his roots. There might be a resurgence of opposition within the PT, but the efforts of the CM to suppress leftists within the party within the past several years (including purges) have been so successful that one has to be skeptical of the possibility. Another possibility is that the new Socialism and Freedom Party, formed in 2004 by legislators booted from the PT for their constant criticisms of Lula's economic policy, will benefit and may even put up a viable fight for the presidency. --Mitch Weerth |
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