Brazilian Workers Party Congress, 1999

by Fernanda Estima and Rosana Ramos

The authors are journalists and PT activists. Their article was posted on the Internet in December 1999 by International Viewpoint (IV), publication of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, a worldwide organization of workers and socialists. IV’s e-mail address is International_Viewpoint@compuserve.com and it has two websites as follows: http://www.internationalen.se/sp/ivp.htm and http://come.to/international-viewpoint

“Fernando Henrique Cardoso — Out, Out, Out!”

— the slogan that polarized the congress

From November 24 to 28, at the Venda Nova training institute in Belo Horizonte, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, 927 delegates gathered for the Second National Congress of Brazil’s Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, better known as the PT). At a cost of more than half a million dollars, the SESC social club at the institute was taken over by PT delegations from all across the country, as well a large number of guests and observers not only from Brazil but representing political parties, environmental movements and human rights organizations from a number of countries, including France, Portugal, Uruguay, East Timor, and Mexico.

Besides the election of a new national leadership and party president, the agenda promised three main discussions:

Twelve sets of theses were presented, each taking up the three areas of debate, as well as two declarations (one from the Trabalho tendency and one from Milton Temer).1

There were three candidates for the position of PT President: the federal deputy José Dirceu, supported by the current leadership majority and standing for a third term; the federal deputy Milton Temer; and the outgoing general secretary of the party, Arlindo Chinaglia.

Despite the items on the agenda, discussion was cut short. Few questions were fully debated and the discussions on the conception of the party and socialism hardly happened at all, causing considerable frustration among Congress delegates.

What did polarize the debates was the issue of whether or not to adopt the slogan “Cardoso Out.”

For those unable to be present in Minas Gerais, a team of journalists provided real time coverage of the events, discussions, and votes on the PT’s own website. The page received more than 54,000 visits in the course of the  Congress.

Main Thesis and Amendments

The Congress really got going at the end of the second day with the presentation of the different thesis documents.

The document chosen was that of the outgoing majority tendency, Articulation — Unity in Struggle, entitled “Program of the Democratic Revolution.” This guideline thesis was then used to orient the next phase of discussion, in which delegates met in subject groups to discuss the document and present amendments. Three of these subject groups were set up. Their discussion focused mainly on whether the slogan “Cardoso Out” should be included in the document, on the defense of socialism, and on questions of party building. Amendments which received at least 20 percent in the groups were then taken back to the plenary session.

On the question of socialism the plenary session of the Congress rejected the amendment presented by supporters of the Nosso Tempo document2 and voted to keep the document in its original form (with amendments presented by the proposers themselves to reaffirm the positions adopted at the PT’s Seventh  National Meeting and its First Congress).

The proposal on suspending payment of the foreign debt was rejected. The wording of the guideline thesis was retained, defending renegotiation of the debt, with the following addition: “Intransigence on the part of the creditors could lead to suspension of payments of the foreign public debt. And it is necessary to introduce exchange controls on all capital movements in and out of the country as well as levels of taxation on the remittance of profits in line with international levels, i.e., 30 percent rather than the current level of 15 percent. Any attempt to renationalize the foreign debt must be blocked.”

Orientation in the Present Situation

The approved text defines the PT’s “arc of alliances” as the PDT, PSB, PCdoB, PC, and sectors of the PMDB opposed to the Cardoso government.3 As far as a possible alliance with the PPS is concerned, the document makes any alliance conditional on “programmatic agreements and opposition to Cardoso and to neo-liberalism.”4 The document approved by the Congress also opens the door to other possible alliances, as long as these are endorsed by the PT’s regional leadership bodies.

The PT Congress rejected an amendment restricting alliances to only those parties which nationally define themselves as being in opposition to Cardoso and to neo-liberalism. The debates over “Cardoso Out” polarized the entire Congress. Federal Deputy Milton Temer, arguing in favor of including the slogan, pointed out that all the PT’s state conventions — with the single exception of that in the state of Parana — had elected their delegates to the PT Congress on the basis of support for the slogan. Temer also pointed out that the amendments on this question raised broader issues, “the conception of the party and of internal democracy, questions which have been very important for the PT.” After lengthy debate, the amendment proposing inclusion of the slogan “Cardoso Out” was defeated — it was the tensest and most hotly disputed moment of the Congress.

The “Cardoso Out, IMF Out” slogan has figured prominently in the recent rise of popular protests against the Brazilian government, especially among peasants in the Movement of the Landless and other social organizations which have played a leading part in these mobilizations. It has also been promoted by wide layers of PT activists. However, after a campaign of abuse from government spokesmen and the bourgeois media accusing those making this call of wanting to bypass democracy and overthrow the constitution, the majority of the PT leadership resisted adopting the slogan, claiming it would damage the party’s democratic credentials.

New Leadership

Squeezed by lack of time, mainly because a whole series of parallel meetings prevented the Congress sessions from starting on time, the discussion of new statutes for the PT ended up being referred back to the next meeting of the National Directorate (DN), with two important caveats.

(1) On the issue of finances, a National Conference should be held.

(2) On all questions involving a change in statutes — including that of finances — at least 60 percent of the DN would have to vote in favor. Apart from proportional representation, based on the votes cast for slates, the DN is made up of the elected president, the two party leaders in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, as well as sectoral representatives (for the unions and the youth), and Comrade Lula (party founder and steelworkers union leader Luis Ignacio da Silva), whose name was approved directly by the plenary, as had happened at the previous national conference (although there remained significant disagreements among the delegates over this procedure).

The installation of electronic voting and counting meant that the result was announced before 5 pm on the final day.

Seven slates stood for the National Directorate (DN), and the vote was as follows:

Leadership Votes (DN) Executive
(CEN)
Nosso Tempo 90 10 8 2
Democratic Revolution 398 44 35 8
Radical Democracy 73 8 71
Socialism or Barbarism 190 21 17 4
Movimento PT 116 13 10 2
PT of Mass Struggle 26 3 2 1
True to the PT’s Origins 19 2 2 2

A total of 912 votes were counted, including 2 blank votes and 2 invalid votes

The Nosso Tempo slate is based on the Socialist Democracy tendency.5 Democratic Revolution is the slate of the leadership majority, Articulation — Unity in Struggle, which has subsequently incorporated the old São Paulo–based left opposition grouping headed by Rui Falcão, a former national president of the PT. Radical Democracy is the slate of the tendency of the same name, which presented its programmatic thesis “For a Republican Democracy.”6 Socialism or Barbarism brings together the bulk of the PT left, including Left Articulation, Socialist Force, and the Movement Tendency, as well as various regional groupings. Movimento PT was a slate presented by Arlindo Chinaglia, Tarso Genro, and a number of other prominent PT figures.7 True to the PT’s Origins was the slate of the Trabalho tendency (see note 1).

In the elections for party president Jose Dirceu was reelected with 496 votes.  Milton Temer came second with 296 votes. Arlindo Chinaglia was third with 113 votes. There were five invalid votes and four blank ones.