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Unexpectedly, Brazilian President Ignacio da Silva
(“Lula”) failed to achieve an overall majority in the general elections
of Oct. 1. He ended up with only 48.61 percent, well below the
public opinion poll estimate of his support.
The big bourgeois press has
been saying that corruption scandals cut more deeply into his
vote than expected. They have ignored the fact that a left-wing
challenger, Heloisa Helena, a member of the Fourth International,
the international revolutionary organization with which Socialist
Action is aligned, scored almost 7 percent, gaining 6.5 million
votes.
She is the former head of the
Senate fraction of the Partido dos Trabaljadores, Lula’s party,
which was initially formed on the basis of an upsurge of trade-union
struggles in the 1980s. She was the most prominent opponent of the
PT president’s swing to the right after he came into office and become
the leader of a left split from the PT, the Party of Freedom and
Socialism (PSOL).
In these elections, the
PSOL was allied with the United Socialist Workers Party (PSTU),
which presents itself as a revolutionary party and has considerable
strength in the trade-union movement.
In most of the races
for other federal and local posts, the PSOL got token votes,
except in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where it elected a federal
deputy with 119,000 votes. In that state, Heloisa Helena got 17
percent of the vote.
Another aspect of the vote
that the bourgeois press did not analyze is the fact that the PT
vote was highest in the impoverished northeast. These are, of
course, the poorest states. But they are also politically the
most backward.
The PT organization there is
much newer than in its old base in the industrialized south.
In the south, the original areas of PT strength, the population
has experienced the PT in office and has apparently
been disappointed.
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