lbo-talk-digest V1 #6469

[Gar Lipow]

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002 20:51:40 -0300 "Alexandre Fenelon" <afenelon at zaz.com.br> said.
> 
> - -The Brazilian PT (Worker´s Party) was born in 1982 as a broad leftwing
> - -coalition, with VERY strong influence from the catholic left. It also
> - -included non Stalinists Marxists and "independent" leftwing tendencies,
> - -with links to Trade Unions. This party grew steadily in the following
> - -elections. Now they have something like 10-15% of the nationwide voting
> - -and are the party who controls more capital cities (including São Paulo,
> - -the biggest city in our country). They also have 4 state governors.
> - -Since 1989, they are moving to right and after 1994, they started to move
> - -even faster. Now their program doesn´t say one word about renationalizing
> - -the enterprises sold in the 90´s (in a disastrous program of privatizations
> - -that ended by allowing foreign enterprises control over many strategic
> - -sectors of Brazilian economy, including telecoms, electricity and railways)
> - -In fact it´s very dificult to see diferences between Lula and Jospin or
> - -Blair. However, the finacial community is afraid of whatever leader that
> - -isn´t 100% reliable (ie., willing to play according to Wall Street rules)
> - -so they oppose Lula despite his efforts to appear "reliable" for the
> - -"market". Furthermore, even if Lula wins, he won´t have a majority in
> - -the Congress, and in Brazil it´s halfway to disaster, as it was in Chile
> - -by 1971-3. We have a Presidentialist system, but a non cooperating
> - -Congress can led a government to complete administrative paralysis.
> - -The alliance with PL, a rightwing party with strong links to Universal
> - -Church of God´s Kingdom (an ultra rightwing neopentecostal church) is
> - -designed to make the party more appealing to conservative electorate, but
> - -it will have the opposing effect since it will alienate tradional PT voters
> - -(like me, for instance, I won´t vote for a PT representative in the
> Congress -because they are in coalition with PL and here we have proportional voting
> - -so I can vote PT and help to elect a representative from PL) while they
> - -won´t overcome the deep distrust the rightwingers have towards PT. To make
> - -things even worse we are approaching a deep economic crisis that may be
> - -associated to an international crisis. <snip>

Thanks. This kind of context is exactly what I needed to follow what is 
going on. Even having followed both the mainstream U.S. press, and much 
of the U.S. left press on this subject, I knew perheaps a tenth of the 
above -- at most.