Left and right in the Workers' Party

The left of the PT defends the idea that the time has come to create a pole around a radical slogan, "IMF out! Cardoso out!" [Cardoso is the president of Brazil]... with left demands: cancellation of the debt, control over capital movements, renationalisation of the banks and big strategic enterprises, land reform under the control of the tillers, and radical urban reform.

The majority of the PT proposes a feeble program. It reaffirms its wish for socialism, but wants to tame the party in order to promote electoral alliances with the centre-right. It wants a party which bases itself more on electoral "success" than on its support and activity with the different social movements.

The left, for its part, fights for a program of government which breaks clearly with the privileges of the ruling class, and bases itself on broad popular participation as the motor force of this government. Building on its positive experience at the head of several states and cities - including Porto Alegre - it wants elected representatives to put their mandate at the service of the organisations and to work for the unification of struggles.

The left also fights against the bureaucratisation under way in the party, so that the PT remains the popular party of opposition to the neoliberal policies of Cardoso.

The left proposed a candidate for president of the PT, Milton. He got 296 votes, and Dirceu, the outgoing president, was relected with 496 votes. The number of participants, the liveliness of the debates, and the quantity of forums which took place between the plenary sessions (on the question of women, of blacks, of youth, of gays and lesbians, of disabled people) gave on the whole an impression of good health.

Abridged from a report in the French revolutionary weekly Rouge by Roseline Vachetta.