Lula's "Tropical Blairism" in Brazil

international | anti-capitalism | news report Monday December 15, 2003 20:55 by John Meehan

Senator Helena Heloisa Expelled from the PT

Senator Helena Heloisa has been expelled from the governing Workers' Party (PT) of Brazil.

The National Directorate (DN) of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) voted this afternoon by 55 votes to 27 to expel Senator Heloisa Helena and three PT members of the Brazilian lower house. The DN rejected a proposal by Senator Eduardo Suplicy - who has been actively defending Heloisa - to reduce the punishment to a six month suspension. On Heloisa's behalf, MP Walter Pinheiro (also a member of the DS tendency within the PT, Fourth International Supporters) announced that Heloisa would be appealing against the decision.

Party Atop Brazil Government Expels 4 Dissident Lawmakers

By LARRY ROHTER,
New York Times, December 15, 2003

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/americas/15BRAZ.html

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 14 - Ignoring protests here and abroad, Brazil's
governing party expelled four dissident lawmakers on Sunday, an action
that confirms the recent shift of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
and his government away from their leftist roots but threatens to widen
an already serious internal breach.

One senator and three members of the lower house of Congress were purged
by the directorate of the Workers' Party in a secret ballot in a
closed-door session in Brasília. In recent statements by party leaders,
all four of the so-called radicals had been accused of taking part in a
campaign to "demoralize" the government and Mr. da Silva, who did not
attend the meeting.

Ostensibly, the ouster of the legislators was punishment for their
failure to vote in favor of Mr. da Silva's proposal to reduce pension
benefits, which Congress approved this month. But it also reflects the
growing dissatisfaction of the left wing of the party, known popularly
as "the Shiites," with the president's abandonment of traditional party
positions and his determination to enforce party discipline despite that
discontent.

Mr. da Silva, a former lathe operator and labor union leader, is
Brazil's first working-class president. He was elected a little over a
year ago with more than 60 percent of the vote on a platform that
promised a sweeping social transformation and increased investment in
education and health.

Since taking office in January, however, he has moved to pile up record
budget surpluses to obtain a stamp of approval from the International
Monetary Fund, a policy that has stunted growth and contributed to high
unemployment. In addition, he recently denied that he had ever been a
leftist.

This shift toward "tropical Blairism," to use the sarcastic phrase
coined by Emir Sader, a sociologist who has long been one of the
Workers' Party main theoreticians, has been well received by foreign
investors alarmed by Mr. da Silva's fiery anticapitalist oratory in the
past. But it has also dismayed some of the president's most ardent
supporters and oldest friends.

"This is not the first year of the Workers' Party government, it's the
ninth year of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government," Francisco de
Oliveira, a founder of the party, complained recently, referring to the
two-term president who preceded Mr. da Silva and was constantly
criticized by the Workers' Party.

Several other prominent figures in the party had threatened to leave if
the party leadership and expelled the radicals on Sunday. They object
not only to the economic policies of the government but also to what
they have described as the Stalinist attitude of the pragmatist party
faction now in power.

"The current leadership of the Workers' Party plans to impose a
uniformity worthy of the parties it has historically criticized so
much," Mr. Sader wrote recently. "Even the British Labor Party, under
the direction of the Blair faction, allowed a significant portion of its
deputies to vote against participation in the Iraq war."

Mr. da Silva's purge of the dissident parliamentarians has also become a
cause célèbre among leftist groups outside Brazil, the largest nation in
Latin America. Early this month, an open letter signed by the American
linguist Noam Chomsky and the British filmmaker Ken Loach, among others,
was sent to the Workers' Party directorate, urging them to reconsider
their position.

Expulsion of "those who continue to defend the traditional policies of
the Workers' Party," said the letter, "will suggest that the Workers'
Party has lost its proud tradition of democracy, pluralism and
tolerance."

The lawmakers were expelled as another party that had been a part of Mr.
da Silva's multiparty governing coalition formally broke with the
president. The Democratic Labor Party, led by Mr. da Silva's former
running mate Leonel Brizola, has accused Workers' Party leaders of
abandoning their principles and selling out to international capitalism.

Mr. da Silva can afford those defections, however, because the two
principal parties that were the backbone of the previous government
support much of his legislative agenda, arguing that he has appropriated
their program. In addition, the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement
Party has joined the government in return for an as yet undetermined
number of cabinet posts.

This is not the first time that the Workers' Party has expelled members
who do not adhere to the party line. In the past, even some of those
purged Sunday supported the ejection of advocates of forming alliances
with other parties, the policy that Mr. da Silva is now following.