The PT experience in Rio Grande do Sul

by Carlos Henrique Arabe

The following article introduces a special report on the first year of “democratic and popular government” in Rio Grande do Sul, on the tensions within the PT, and on the particular role of Democracia Socialista (Socialist Democracy, the PT current associated with the Fourth International). Carlos Henrique Arabe is a member of the PT’s national leadership (Diretario Nacional, or DN) and a leading member of Socialist Democracy. His comments are taken from the article “O PT e sua experiencia gaucha” [The PT and Its Left-wing Experience] in Em Tempo, October 1999. Em Tempo is the publication of the Socialist Democracy current.

The new model of government which the PT is developing in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, is a decisive test for the party as a whole, and for each of the currents inside the PT.

The PT victory in the 1998 state elections was the result of a deep polarization in Brazil’s southernmost state. This class confrontation has continued throughout the first year of PT government. The successful resistance of the PT administration to pressures from the ruling classes makes the Rio Grande experience all the more important to study.

It is the most sustained, and most coherent, attempt to develop a program of structural change anywhere in Brazil.

The Participatory Budget is a key element of this process. This successful involvement of citizens in public affairs is not just a strategy to legitimate and strengthen the left government. It is also a way of building a new kind of institutional behavior, based on elements of direct democracy, and transforming the established relationship between rulers and ruled.

It is 12 months since Governor Olivio Dutra and Vice-Governor Miguel Rosseto took power. The following articles evaluate their performance, and show the difficulties facing the left government. It is one thing to assemble a wide social base at election time. It is more difficult to actually govern.

Our “globally positive” judgment on the Dutra administration contrasts sharply with the record of PT administrations elsewhere in Brazil.

Other PT state governors (Vitor Buaiz in Espirito Santo and Cristovam Buarque in the Brasilia Federal District) and most PT municipal administrations (particularly in São Paulo state) have had a large element of adaptation to the existing institutional structures. And they abandoned attempts to confront the interests of the local ruling classes. But in Rio Grande do Sul, there is not just the participatory budget system. Conflicts like the renegotiation of the previous government’s incentives to the Ford motor company, or the prohibition on the cultivation and sale of genetically modified crops have established a constant confrontation with the state’s elites.

The PT’s programmatic identity suffered a rupture in 1994. Until then, party documents expressed the aspiration to promote the interests of the working class and the majority of the population. There were strong elements of a transition to socialism. But this perspective was much clearer in the 1989 founding documents than in 1994, when it was watered down by economistic arguments. And in the 1998 “minimum program” these elements of breaking from the capitalist system were completely absent. Yet the orientation of the Rio Grande do Sul government goes in quite the opposite direction. It has attracted so much criticism precisely because it has established a strategic confrontation between its own project and the bourgeoisie.

Social Organization and Party Building

The Rio Grande do Sul experience has maintained another continuity which has been lost in other parts of the PT — the link between institutional politics and social organization. At the national level, and in many other states, the PT has “disconnected” these two areas of activity. The campaign to elect Olivio Dutra as governor of Rio Grande was not just a political-electoral struggle. It was an intense popular mobilization. The organized forces of the working class and middle classes confronted the bourgeoisie. Rio Grande is the place where the PT has been most successful in developing an equilibrium between the two arms of its “pincer” strategy — attacking the centers of bourgeois power with a combination of institutional and mass struggle.

The PT in Rio Grande has continued to function in a very democratic manner. It was the first state PT to introduce proportional representation of the different PT tendencies in the party leadership bodies. PT meetings in Rio Grande do Sul still stress the importance of militants coming together to discuss and decide on party policy — despite nationally imposed reforms that weaken this way of working.

In other words, the construction of the PT in Rio Grande do Sul is the most advanced experience in all Brazil. Although the above factors are not the only reasons for the spectacular success of the PT there, they are certainly crucial, and a key lesson for the rest of the party.

Those who don’t like this often argue that Rio Grande do Sul has so many historical and cultural specificities that it is virtually “another country." More often than not, this argument serves to justify the watering down of PT policy, and the anti-democratic practices that occur in the PT elsewhere in Brazil. São Paulo, for example. In fact, since Rio Grande do Sul is not another country, it is more and more affected by national factors. Not just the economic crisis or the changing nature of the federal state, but also the degeneration of the PT elsewhere in the country.

And so, although Rio Grande do Sul certainly has many cultural specificities, it is more and more involved in national political debates. And it is very positive that the idea of participatory democracy is spreading out across Brazil. This started when the PT won control of the Rio Grande capital, Porto Alegre, over 11 years ago. Now that the PT controls the whole state, there is much more potential to “spread the word.” In fact, it would be good if they made this a priority, rather than just influencing the rest of the country as a consequence of their local activities.

But there are other, more worrying developments. Only a minority of the PT (the currents Democracia Socialista, Esquerda Democratica, and Acção Democratica) share our “globally positive” evaluation of the first year of government. Most of the PT in the state capital, Porto Alegre, recently approved a resolution which accused the Dutra government of “kissing the hand” of the right-wing parties in its negotiations with Ford. This resolution was supported by Left Articulation (Articulação de Esquerda). This is the current most strongly represented in the state government, but for some reason it doesn’t defend the government, and generally avoids serious discussion of the question. This current formed a bloc with the right of wing of the party, the so-called  “Broad PT”  (“PT Amplo”), comprising the Articulation – Unity in Struggle (Articulação–Unidade na Luta) current of party leader Lula da Silva and Democracia Radical. These currents produced a separate document in which they criticized the Dutra government as ultraleft and “conflictive.”

These currents have failed to understand that the Dutra government is the government of all the party. They are obsessed by short-term electoral interests (including the elections within the party). They exaggerate the responsibilities of the leadership. And they fail to explain why their own currents act and speak in one way inside the government, and quite another in party meetings.

All this shows the growing distinction between the struggle for leadership inside the Rio Grande PT, and the willingness of each current to take responsibility for formulating, arguing, and implementing initiatives which respond to the real difficulties of governing the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is time to build a new leadership, and a new dynamic inside the party, to reflect the new situation and the new dynamic unleashed by the election of Dutra and Rosseto.

The PT’s reaction to what is happening in Rio Grande do Sul will be a decisive factor in coming struggles with the bourgeoisie.

Dealing with the situation in Rio Grande do Sul will also be decisive for the evolution of each of the currents inside the PT. Particularly those which, at least until now, considered themselves to be part of the left. The capacity to respond to the challenges of the most difficult moments, the key social and political struggles, and the capacity to exercise true leadership, is what tests and demonstrates the qualities — and the limits — of the party, and of each of its currents.