IUF
Uniting Food, Farm and Hotel Workers World-Wide
International Labour and the Elections in Brazil
Posted to the IUF website 31-Oct-2002Share this article.
By electing Lula da Silva president of Brazil on October 27, Brazilians voted overwhelmingly for change. The enormous vote for the Workers Party (PT) candidate was not simply a vote of no-confidence in the neo-liberal policies of the previous governing coalition, a protest against corruption, the rejection of a failed establishment. The vote for Lula was a massive, positive vote for jobs for the jobless, land for the landless, for dignity and justice in a country scarred by glaring inequality, hunger and violence.
The PT's stunning electoral victory � the first of its kind in Brazil � is a victory for the labour movement, for the unions remain the core around which the PT sustains its network of social organizations and activists. It is also a victory for labour internationally, and we should now be preparing to defend the new government and help give it both the breathing space and the resources it will need if the enormous hopes and energy inspired by Lula's election are not to be dissipated.
The millions of Brazilians who cast their votes for Lula did not vote for a more efficient administration of austerity and government by the IMF. They voted for real reforms, and therein lies the challenge. For perhaps never has the gap between the aspiration for reform and the resources available for change been greater than it is today in the case of Brazil.
The previous government's legacy to the people of Brazil is a crushing debt burden, a plunging currency, and drastic restraints on public spending which were the price to pay for yet more loans, originally granted in part to strengthen Cardoso and keep the PT out of the presidency. Speculative money flows and high interest rates have hollowed out industrial production while imports have surged - one of the reasons why many industrialists backed Lula's candidacy. Brazilian industry also has good reason to fear the proposals for a Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement on the disastrous NAFTA model, which would close the door on the development of a national industrial policy. A tactical alliance between the unions and manufacturers willing to respect trade union rights thus makes perfect sense in the current situation. But it also ties the government's hands. Reforms cost money, and the international lenders are organized to ensure that what money there is goes to service the debt rather than fund land reform, social services and increased living standards for the poor.
The international labour movement has as great a stake as the people of Brazil in profound and lasting reforms in that country, and we must work to ensure that Lula's presidency does not remain hostage to a predatory international financial system. Lula may have had no choice but to accept the obligations he inherits from his predecessors. That cannot and should not stop us for campaigning for the cancellation of developing country debt, a project both feasible and necessary.
US trade representative Robert Zoellick has told Brazil it must choose between trade with the FTAA and trade with Antarctica. This assertion is as dangerous as it is absurd. NAFTA has been a social, economic and environmental disaster. Proposals to extend it throughout the hemisphere can and must be rejected. The alternative to the FTAA is not trade with Antarctica, although proposals to scrap the Antarctica Treaty and introduce strip mining give an accurate idea of Antarctica under NAFTA. The alternative is a system of trade geared to development and the raising, not lowering, of social and environmental standards. Here, too, international labour has a crucial role to play.
The Workers Party is famous for having introduced "participatory" budgeting" in Porto Alegre, the process through which the municipal budget is submitted to public scrutiny and democratic decision-making processes. Unions can contribute to the Workers Party victory in Brazil by actively monitoring national and international policy towards the new government � in the first instance trade and financial policy � to help give it the room and the resources it needs. Lula's victory highlights the urgent need to drag IMF policy and hemispheric trade deals out of the corporate back rooms and into the public spotlight, and to submit them to the same criteria with which the citizens of Porto Alegre evaluate their city's budget.