Antiglobalization Forum to Return to a Changed Brazil

www.nytimes.com By LARRY ROHTER

ÔRTO ALEGRE, Brazil — When groups critical of globalization decided three years ago to organize a World Social Forum as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this seemed a logical place to gather. Brazil's Workers Party, one of the main sponsors of the event, was in power here and considered the state of Rio Grande do Sul an ideal showcase for its brand of "post-Marxist" democracy and social revolution.

Last October, the leader of the Workers Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was elected president of Brazil, and in that capacity he is scheduled to open the third World Social Forum here on Jan. 23. But in the same election, voters here in this prosperous state of 10.5 million people gave his party a drubbing, electing a governor who says he embraces globalization and will try to attract the multinational corporations that the Workers Party had shunned.

"We are seeking to form partnerships and to minimize confrontations," the new governor, Germano Rigotto of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, said in a recent interview here in the state capital. "Radicalization and polarization are not the way for this state to grow more and attract new investments."

During the election campaign, Mr. Rigotto repeatedly criticized the Workers Party government led by Olívio Dutra for reneging on an agreement that would have brought a Ford Motor Company plant here and created thousands of jobs. The party objected to the tax breaks and other incentives offered to Ford.

"Not one cent of the taxpayers' money is going to go to those who don't need it," Mr. Dutra announced when he took office four years ago. "These funds are necessary for health, education and agriculture."

The Ford plant was eventually built in the state of Bahia, along with 17 other factories that supply glass, plastic, leather and other components for automobiles. Though David Stival, state president of the Workers Party, still defends the decision, saying "the contract was totally unfavorable and would not have resolved our social problems," the new state administration believes that voters have made it clear that they want a more vibrant private sector to reduce the state's social burden.

"Lula talks about Zero Hunger, and we agree with that," said Luiz Roberto Andrade Ponte, secretary of development and international affairs in the new state government, which took office on Jan. 1. "But we think the best way to combat hunger is creating jobs for people, through productive employment rather than a wage paid by the state."

The forum itself also seems to have played a role in the Workers Party's defeat. At the first session in 2001, the most prominent participant, received personally by Mr. Dutra and praised warmly, was José Bové, the French farmer and globalization opponent whose best-known exploit is vandalizing a McDonald's.

Mr. Bové had barely arrived here when he and members of the Landless Movement, associated with the most radical wing of the Workers Party, raided a Monsanto company experimental farm where genetically modified soybeans and corn were grown, destroying seeds and documents. He was later detained and expelled from Brazil, generating a protest by forum delegates who chanted, "We are all José Bové."

Since the state's interior is dominated by thousands of small farmers, the image of private property being destroyed did not sit well with landholders. But the affinity the Workers Party showed for Mr. Bové also rankled because he is one of the European Union's most outspoken supporters of restrictions on agricultural imports. Rio Grande do Sul is a major exporter of meat and grain that wants those barriers removed.

"It was a paradox that the populace was quick to perceive," said Carlos Sperotto, president of the state agricultural federation. "You had the Workers Party making common cause with the same guy who impedes the entry of our products in the French market, and that had a lot of impact."

The Workers Party has also been weakened by a corruption scandal linking a campaign fund-raiser close to Mr. Dutra with an illegal numbers game popular across Brazil. During an official parliamentary inquiry into that connection, a former party official testified that numbers game kingpins had donated $500,000 toward the purchase of the party's new headquarters here. But the inquiry's highlight was the playing of a tape on which the fund-raiser, claiming to speak for Mr. Dutra, could be heard urging the then chief of police to go easy on numbers runners.

"This sort of thing happens regularly in other parts of Brazil, but it had more impact here because this time the Workers Party was involved," said Celi Pinto, a professor of political science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul here. "They had set themselves up as the guardians of morality, with a monopoly on virtue and ethics in politics, so it really hurt them."

In the end, though, Mr. Dutra's administration was considered so disastrous that he was unable even to win the Workers Party's primary vote last year. Instead, the nomination went to Tarso Genro, an admirer of the neo-Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramcsi and then the mayor of this city of 1.5 million, who lost to Mr. Rigotto by more than 300,000 votes.

But both Mr. Dutra and Mr. Genro quickly landed on their feet. They were appointed to highly visible cabinet posts in the new Workers Party national government, Mr. Dutra as minister of urban affairs and Mr. Genro as minister of economic and social development.

Mr. Rigotto said that despite the change of administration, he hopes that the forum will continue to meet here because it "projects Rio Grande do Sul throughout the whole world" and generates tourist revenue. "I think, though, they could be more pluralistic and open to more currents of thought," he added, "but it's the organizers who decide who to invite and what to discuss, not us."