Brazil's Lula moved right and won; his party stayed left and lost
By Claudio Campuzano SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
November 3, 2002
More than one hundred million Brazilians went to the polls on Oct.27 and for the first time in the country's history they chose as president the working-class candidate of a leftist party. How many times have you read this in the past week?
Read now this alternative description of what happened.
More than one hundred million Brazilians went to the polls on Oct. 27 and, over the opaque government-sponsored, centrist candidate, chose as president a charismatic leader who, during his campaign, had moved to the center, away from his party's left.
The "working-class" tag hung on Luiz Inácio da Silva, universally known as Lula, is meant to denote his humble origins as a tapioca salesman and lathe operator, the equivalent of an American politician's log cabin. But 56-year-old Lula has not punched a factory's time clock in the last three decades. Since 1975 he is a full-time, salaried union president. He has been a member of the federal Chamber of Deputies and has run, unsuccessfully, for the governorship of São Paulo (once) and for the presidency (three times). He lives in one of three apartments he owns in São Bernardo do Campo, a nice middle-class suburb of São Paulo, and owns a weekend property.
In other words, as a top labor union official and regular player in state and national elections, Lula has been recognized for the last quarter-century as a full member of Brazil's political establishment as much as José Serra, the candidate of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's centrist coalition he trounced in the runoff election by wining 61 percent of the vote.
We said here before that Brazil would not vote for candidate of the hard left. It didn't. A majority of Brazilians voted for a Lula that had moved to the center, but not equally so for a patently leftist Workers' Party (PT) which has not showed signs of following the same path-at least not yet.
"Lula's candidacy was much bigger than the party," said Benicio Schmidt, a political scientist in Brasilia, the capital. "His support didn't revert to candidates in the states."
Indeed, despite Lula's overwhelming personal victory, his Workers' Party fared poorly in state elections, taking just three of 27 gubernatorial races. It faces opposition governments in economically powerful Minas Gerais and in São Paulo, Brazil's richest and most populous state-where Lula launched his political career-and a governor from the PT lost his bid for reelection in Rio Grande do Sul state, long a showcase for the Workers Party, and whose exports play a major role in Brazil's economy.
These are three of the four states in Brazil with the largest population (the other is Rio de Janeiro, whose main business is tourism). And Brazíl is the only truly federal country in South America. It was a moratorium on interest payments decreed by Minas Gerais's governor that sparked the currency crisis that forced Brazil to abandon its crawling peg in favor of a floating exchange rate in 1999-and half a dozen of the states have called for a reduction in debt payments to Brasilia.
In São Paulo, for example, Lula gathered slightly over 11 million votes and Serra almost 9 millon, but the figures were inverted in the governorship race, in which the WP's candidate got around 8.5 million votes against almost 12 million that went to the winning candidate from Serra's party, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).
The same phenomenon could be seen in almost all of Brazil. The flip side of Lula's overwhelming victory was an equally ovrewhelming defeat of the PT in the state elections. The party could only get reelected one of its eight candidates that were seeking a second period, in Mato Grosso do Sul. In all, it gained governors in three states (Piaui and Acre were the other two) of scarce political weight and modest electorates-a total of 3.6 million voters, 3 percent of the national electorate.
The PSDB, that the PT is labeling as the "great loser" of the election, gained governorships in seven states, among them the most important in the nation, whose electorates add up to more than 52 million votes, almost half of the national total. And the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the PSDB's only formal ally in the election, obtained another five governorships, in states where 24 million Brazilians live.
Furthermore, voters were very careful in leaving the Workers' Party far away from having a majority in either house of Congress. In both they would need, at a minimum, the votes of two parties with large blocs to have their proposals approved.
The significance of this voters' message has been well understood by the PT's president, José Dirceu, even before the final results of the second round were known.
"The left is the route for the PT," he said, "but Brazil voted for alliances and the party put together a center-left alliance. Therefore, it is necessary to respect the nation's will."
With a small minority in Congress, Lula will have to put together a coalition government. This is already being resisted by many in his party (Lula has moved to the center but the rank and file as well as the intermediate officials of the PT have not) and by the powerful and more-to-the-left so-called Landless Movement that helped elect him.
In choosing Lula, Brazilians believed in the political pilgrimage to the center he completed with his presidential campaign. What gives credence to it is that, like current president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula is, above all, a product of São Paulo, Brazil's capitalistic enclave-the place that attracts those who want to forge their own destiny. Nowhere else in Brazil are there as many opportunities, so much social mobility and the high degree of discrimination rejection that is necessary to allow someone to raise himself, in a little over 50 years and without running into any insurmountable obstacle, through the whole spectrum of social classes, from one extreme to the other.
It was this that the Brazilian electorate elevated to the presidency of the nation, not class war, intolerance or anti-capitalism, which it carefully put aside with its measured and thoughtful vote.
It is being said in Brazil that, at the time when Brazilians were looking for a new departure, what happened is that a lackluster José Serra, with nothing new to offer, lost to a charismatic Lula who suggested new approaches to socio-economic concerns and who succeded because he chose to bet on pragmatism and abandon the traditional dogmas of his party.
Many ask whether Lula is the old wolf in sheep's clothing. But if he were, one way of helping him to keep this clothing on is for the opposition he faces in major states' governments and in Congress to be constructive and cooperate with him in achieving the social and economic goals he set for Brazil.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com