The International Periscope number 16 approaches the six months of as mandate of Squid, the CAP in São Paulo, in the civil service and the security, the Primary Surplus, the new direction of UNE, among others subjects.


Lula completes six months in second term of office
Primary surplus
PAC Watch in São Paulo
The PAC and the civil service
The government and the social movement
The Security Acceleration Program
Security versus violence
Representation compromised
A complex integration
PCdoB may leave the CUT
UNE elects new board and defines action plan of fight
Strange applauses

Lula completes six months in second term of office

President Lula completed his second term’s first six months with good news. Opinion polls done in the month of June show that Lula’s and his administration’s approval ratings are still on the rise.

The survey by the National Industrial Confederation (CNI) and Ibope polling institute indicate that President Lula has the approval of 66% of the Brazilian population, while only 30% disapprove of his way of running the country. On the government, 50% of the respondents considered the administration good or excellent, with 33% considering it fair and only 16% of respondents stating that the federal administration’s performance is poor.

A survey by Instituto Sensus, commissioned by the National Transportation Confederation (CNT), brings similar findings. The poll indicates that the Petista is still well rated and has the approval of 64% of the population. In April, at the time of this Institute’s previous survey, it was at 63.7 percent. Only 29.8% disapproved of the president’s administration. The appraisal of the government is also very similar: 47.5% find the government’s performance to be positive and only 14% find it negative. “What keeps the government’s popularity is the functioning of the economy and the social programs, besides the president’s charisma”, said Ricardo Guedes, a director for Instituto Sensus.

Since he took office for his second term on January 1, 2007, Lula has been striving to implement a positive agenda of investments in infrastructure, education and security, while maintaining the ongoing social programs in place.

To many observers, this initiative would set a very important distinction in relation to the first six months of Lula’s first term (2003-2006), which were dictated by themes such as the social security overhaul and the high interest rates.

As early as January, intent on its decision to reverse the vector from adjustment to development, the Brazilian government launched the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), which seeks to outweigh the monetarist tenet that constrained the first years of his first term in the presidency of the Republic.

The PAC comprises a set of economic policies, planned for the next four years, whose aim is to scale up Brazil’s economic growth, with a total investments’ forecast of 503 billion reais by 2010, one of its priorities being infrastructure, as ports and highways.

The Program targets five areas. The main area addressed encompasses infrastructure measures, including social infrastructure, as housing, sanitation and mass transit. The other areas include measures to boost credit and financing, enhance the environmental regulatory framework, reduce the tax burden and set long-term fiscal measures. The target is to achieve an annual GDP growth of 5 percent.

The first assessment report released in April by the PAC Steering Committee (CGPAC), composed by the president’s chief of staff and the ministers of finance and planning and the body responsible for monitoring the 1,646 actions (734 studies and projects, and 912 works), concluded that 91.6% of said actions were on schedule, with 52.5% advancing at an adequate pace, right on schedule and with unanticipated risks under control, while 39.1% required closer attention, for they were either slightly behind schedule or facing potential risks to their accomplishment.

As the first semester wanes, the government states that it managed to solve the various problems that were holding back the accomplishment of some of the PAC works. According to chief of staff Dilma Rousseff, in an interview to Carta Capital magazine, there have been many advances since the first assessment of the Program. She cited as an example the Estreito hydroelectric power plant, the North-South Railway, the Trans-northeasterner and the Iron Ring, whose hindrances are being overcome, with some of the more critical works having been resumed.

With these investments, the Brazilian economy is expected to grow 4.7% this year, according to an estimate by the Central Bank released in late June. The Central Bank’s estimate surpasses the PAC’s 4.5% forecast. The figure appeared in the “Inflation Report”, a quarterly document prepared by the Central Bank analyzing the situation of the economy.

To some market analysts, the government does indeed have reason to celebrate, for growth projections are quite optimistic and are closing in on the 4.5-percent estimate established by the government at the time of the announcement of the PAC. According to projections made by a hundred financial institutions, Brazil’s GDP is to expand by 4.20% in 2007, up from 4.16% originally forecast. To the industrial sector, the expectation went up from 4.9% to 4.23%.

Primary surplus

Yet, according to some analysts, the euphoria may be attributed to the fact that the government’s growth targets are timid. The government could pay lower interest rates and use the money saved to boost public investments, reduce taxes and “accelerate” the PAC itself.

According to the same analysts, the government still fears that “growing too much” may provoke the unwanted effect of heating the economy, with an ensuing shortage of goods or energy. Thus, it pleases itself with 5% because, if this target is met, it will still have been a political victory considering that the average of the last decades is half of that.

If such analysis is correct, it is as if, in fact, the government were still held prisoner of a trauma typical of Brazil’s neoliberalism: the fear of growth.

The fiscal crunch promoted by the public sector hit a record high in April. States, municipalities, state-owned companies and the federal government, all together, saved R$ 23.5 billion, which will be used to service our debt and is the highest value ever recorded since 1991, when the Central Bank started this statistical series. This saving, termed the primary surplus, was an all-time record and is equivalent to almost all the investment in public works estimated by the federal government for this year, which is expected to be close to R$ 25 billion. Of the R$ 23.5 billion saved in April, R$ 14.9 billion – or 63% – came from the federal government.

State-owned companies also contributed to the record, having obtained a primary surplus of R$ 4.727 billion, the highest ever posted by these companies in a month of April.

By and large, the numbers show that the situation of the public accounts is the same as the one observed recently: the public sector, with the federal government at the helm, keeps saving billions of reais to pay interests.

Public investments in the Pilot Project for Investments (PPI) – investments decided by the executive that do not require parliamentary approval, targeting public works in infrastructure and sanitation and whose expenditures can be deducted from the primary surplus– totaled, from January to May this year, R$ 990.5 million.

The amount is nearly 60% higher than the volume invested in the same period last year, when it reached R$ 592.4 million, but is less than 10% of the overall budget of R$ 11.3 billion forecast for December.

Although the amount disbursed for the works so far is still not anywhere near the forecast, National Treasury secretary Arno Agustín guaranteed that by the end of the year that amount will have been reached. “There is a normal evolution, with investments accelerating throughout the year”, he said. To Agustín, the lower investment volume is normal because there are projects still waiting for approval and towards the end of the year outlays are more intense. “We are in pace with the objective defined by the government, that the whole of the investments forecast for this year be realized”, he guaranteed. Total investments, including the PPI and another R$ 3.8 billion carried forward from last year’s budget, added up to R$ 4.5 billion in the first five months of the year. Investments forecast for the whole year amount to R$ 16.4 billion.

Agustín also commented that, although the bottom line for the month of May showed a growth in expenditures and a drop in revenues, the government will accomplish the financial targets and the primary surplus for this year, set at 3.8% of Gross Domestic Product.

According to Agustín, 2007 expenditures have grown less than in 2006, while revenues, albeit growing at a slower pace, still grow more than expenditures, which is a guarantee that the accounts are under control: “This convergence shows a quite positive long-term fiscal situation”.

The National Treasury report, released on June 27, shows that while revenues increased by 3.7% above GDP growth between 2005 and 2006, this year they are growing at 3.4% in comparison to last year. This same comparison, in the case of expenses, reveals a sharper slowdown, which fell from 7.2%, between 2005 and 2006, to 2.5% between last year and this year. “That shows that the accounts are solidly balanced”, stated Agustín.

A report on total PAC investments, forecast at R$ 15.3 billion, was not published by the National Treasury. In the month of May, the then secretary Tarcísio Godoy presented a detailed account of the expenses with priority works and the rest of the PAC. Until April, the government had only spent 3.5% of the PAC resources.

Agustín pointed out that PAC results are released on a quarterly basis, and that the publication of the Treasury’s results is not linked to the PAC.

He guaranteed, however, that presently there is an acceleration of public sector investing. According to him, an item that confirms the acceleration is the government’s total volume of investments, which rose by 36% over this year’s first five months when compared to last year’s same period.

Released in early July, a poll commissioned by Jornal do Brasil newspaper and conducted by Associação Contas Abertas shows that, of the total R$ 7.3 billion authorized for the PAC in the first semester, only R$ 2.9 billion were cleared and R$ 1 billion actually disbursed. This amount represents 13.8% of the authorized total. The numbers also show that, of the PAC’s 422 actions, 122 have remained only on paper.

PAC Watch in São Paulo

After four months negotiating with the 27 states of the federation and the 184 municipalities of the country’s main metropolitan regions, the Federal Government finally started signing cooperation agreements in the urban and sanitation areas.

These projects involve mainly water supply, slum urbanization, and the reclamation of degraded water zones, removal of occupants of endangered areas and above all the eradication of houses on stilts.

Mostly, finance is to be directed to state and municipal sanitation companies with the required indebtedness capacity due to revenues from services charged.

The state of São Paulo will receive R$ 7.39 billion, R$ 4.92 billion of which in federal grants and the remainder from state and municipal outlays. In the state of São Paulo, the works will benefit, mostly, the São Paulo metropolitan area, the city of Campinas and the Santos coastal area (Baixada Santista). In Minas Gerais, R$ 3.8 billion will be invested over the next four years, of which nearly R$ 3 billion will be funded by federal sources. In the state of Minas Gerais, the government intends to clean up the Velhas River, which is part of the São Francisco Basin, and the Pampulha Bay.

With the largest population in Brazil –over 40 million inhabitants –, the state of São Paulo also boasts the largest industrial park and the highest economic output ­– over 31% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Minas Gerais is Brazil’s second most populous state, with nearly 21 million inhabitants, and has the country’s third largest GDP.

The Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), which opposes the government, administers both states. The governors of these two states are bound to be the opposition’s candidates in the presidential race to succeed Lula in 2010.

In the case of São Paulo, the Workers’ Party state board announced its intention to keep track of how such resources are invested by means of a “PAC Watch”. In a resolution approved on June 23, the board declares it will not allow the PSDB and the more organized core group opposing the Lula administration – which is precisely in the state of São Paulo – to capitalize on the PAC by proposing mechanisms for the participation of society in monitoring these investments and by calling for clear rules and complete transparency in their use.

“We will demand the Serra administration’s share in outlays for the PAC works, as we will demand social control mechanisms to make sure that the allocation of these funds will benefit the whole of the population and contribute to the state’s economy”, says the document.

Rio de Janeiro, run by Governor Sérgio Cabral of government coalition PMDB party, will also receive R$ 2.8 billion. All together, ten capital cities will receive the president’s visit. In Rio, slum urbanization projects and flood prevention works in the Rio de Janeiro state coastal area (Baixada Fluminense) will receive federal funding.

If, on the one hand, the Petistas are keeping an eye on the account-rendering of the PAC resources by PSDB administrations, on the other the elites are showing some concern with regard to the potential political benefits that PAC funds will bring to those municipalities and states run by the PT.

A survey by Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, one of the country’s largest periodicals and, as verified by some media watch institutes in the 2006 elections, a spokesperson for the social democrats, showed that, while it heads 9% of the cities of the state of São Paulo, the Workers’ Party municipalities received about 35% of the federal government’s sanitation and housing budget.

The newspaper claims that the resource allocation reflects the Workers’ Party state board’s last resolution that says that “the PT must seize this victory [the PAC], which belongs to a Workers’ Party government, and directly interfere in the resource allocation of the federal funds in São Paulo and not allow Serra to capitalize on the PAC at our expense”.

The presidency’s chief of staff stated to the newspaper “the federal government has never made any selection using such criterion [political]” and prioritized municipalities with a population over 150 thousand inhabitants, which would account for a predominance of PT-administered cities – at least 11 of them are above this level.

The PAC and the civil service

To the federal civil service, the acceleration program poses a threat to employees should a PAC complementary law (PLP 01/07) be ratified in Congress. The bill determines that over a ten-year period expenditures with the civil service payroll can only increase by an annual 1.5 percent, plus inflation.

The measure is an amendment to the Fiscal Responsibility Act (LRF), which establishes caps to municipal, state and federal government spending. The LRF was created in 2000, in the PSDB administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), who accepted the “suggestion” made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To civil service advocacy groups, the enactment of such amendment would entail ten years of wage stagnation, even higher, therefore, than the wage squeeze promoted by the eight-year social-democratic administration. This 1.5-percent increase, according to the same groups, would be entirely consumed by the vegetative growth of public employees, that is, just promotions alone would account for that amount. Hence, and the wage issue aside, the quality of the public service would be even more hampered since, with the budget in a straitjacket, new hires, or even the replacement of the retirees, would not be allowed.

The Single Central of Workers (CUT) has already had a few meetings with Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo and with the government’s representation in Congress to negotiate the withdrawal of the PAC cap on expenses with personnel. “It’s been difficult, they have been very tough. Both the legislative and the minister underscore the importance of the bill to the PAC. According to them, it is important to show to the ‘famous market’ that the government is committed to the fiscal adjustment”, states Quintino Severo, CUT secretary general.

The trade union centrals want to draft an alternative text to prevent the stagnation of public service.

The government and the social movement

If, on one part, President Lula can celebrate the opinion poll results amidst rising popularity, on the other, his relations with the social movements that have always supported him have turned to yellow light.

As we said in the March issue of this International Periscope, it was to be expected that a new government composition would reflect the social and political forces that led to Lula’s victory in the presidential second-round runoff elections. More, that these same forces would have a key role in determining the government’s decision-making.

Yet what we saw was a ministerial reform that was prisoner to a concept of institutional governability. The priority of the Lula administration was to correspond to the correlation of forces existing in Congress, much more withdrawn than the one produced in the second round of 2006. (See New cabinet in May 2007’s issue of the International Periscope).

The composition of the cabinet, that is, the creation of a coalition government with parties of a wide ideological spectrum, a coalition that will even accept right-leaning parties such as Paulo Maluf’s Progressive Party (PP), has proved fragile when it comes to approving leftist reformist measures. An example thereof is the obstruction in Congress of measures that make land where there is slave labor eligible for the purposes of the agrarian reform.

The multi-party coalition that provides the government with a majority in the lower house of Congress was unable to guarantee the approval of the political overhaul. The parties were incapable of voting united, for example, on the closed-list system matter. This list would mean a profound change of the Brazilian electoral system. With it, according to the percentage of votes obtained, a given party would nominate those elected based on a list of candidates previously organized by the party. The elector would start voting for the party rather than the candidate. Nevertheless, what prevailed in the end were the personal interests of each lawmaker.

Another episode indicative of the frailty of the government coalition was the approval of amendment 3 in Congress, against which President Lula used his veto power. Amendment 3 deregulates labor rights, contributing to flexible legislation. (See May 2007’s issue of the International Periscope)

Once again, what we saw were conservative interests supplanting the alliances negotiated with the government.

The PT, in turn, deliberated in favor of engaging, together with the social movement, in an earnest attempt to vote for the presidential veto against Amendment 3.

These facts, coupled with conservative aspects of President Lula’s policies such as the aforementioned proposition PLP 01/07, and the persisting contradictions between a development policy and the Central Bank’s policies, expressed in the upholding of high interest rates and record surpluses, have contributed for historical allies as the CUT and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), alongside with the political parties that supported Lula in the previous presidential campaigns, to raise the tone of their criticisms to the government.

The Security Acceleration Program

The Lula administration will officially announce on August 1 the National Program for Public Security with Citizenship (Pronasci), dubbed the “Security PAC”. The program, after a four-month preparation period, was presented in July by Minister of Justice Tarso Genro to the president and a group of ministers directly involved in the matter, whose task it is to make adjustments before the Pronasci is launched.

By orientation of the president, two points will still require more detailed discussions –the question of how to implement the police officers’ national wage floor and a more rigorous definition of the program’s resource allocation over the coming years.

Tarso Genro, according to Radiobrás news agency, declared that “certainly” the officers’ floor should exceed one thousand reais. To put the program up and running now in 2007 the minister informed that some R$ 470 million must be allocated. In this amount, expenses with the police officers’ raises were not included.

According to Tarso, the idea is to build 187 new prisons in the country. The minister explained that the number would depend on the costs for each detention unit.

The Security PAC will initially target the creation of 2,000 new places in specific correctional facilities for youths aged 18-24, and the same number in women’s correctional facilities. The idea is to create, over the first three years of the program, a women’s penitentiary and another one for youths in that age range, in each of the 11 metropolitan regions that are to be initially covered by the Pronasci.

According to the Ministry of Justice’s press service, the Pronasci proposes the integration of public security actions with social programs in order to combat crime across the country. Its main objective is to face the social and cultural causes for crime through actions designed to prevent, control and repress violence.

Security versus violence

In an interview to Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, Tarso Genro said that police operations like the one carried out in the Alemão slum in the state of Rio de Janeiro last month are part of the first phase of the Security PAC. “Operations of this nature are designed to reoccupy territory”, said the minister, to whom “the question of territory pacification and reoccupation is an imperative”.

According to Tarso, “if the State does not exert full authority over a given region, the State is unable to change the public security paradigm. Social policies can be effective in improving the quality of life, but they don’t reduce crime rates. What is happening in Rio is not a Pronasci action. It is an initiative by the local state government. In the Pronasci, operations of this nature are provided for in cases of territorial reoccupation”.

Asked about the risk of having Pronasci actions contested by human rights advocacy groups, Tarso declared, “This risk is small because there are very few organized crime power zones closed to the entrance of the State in the country and I believe that –I don’t say 100% – its quasi totality is in Rio de Janeiro. As for the presence of human rights advocacy groups and the OAB (the Brazilian Bar Association), the federal government finds it highly positive because these actions must always have a counterpoint and the surveillance by these institutions of society. Abuses do indeed occur and these abuses stem from, precisely, a tradition that we want to change in the paradigm of our country’s public security”.

On June 27, one of the largest police anti drug trafficking operations in the state of Rio de Janeiro left 19 people dead in the Alemão slum, a hill controlled by drug dealers. Before this standoff, the Alemão slum had already been under police occupation for nearly 50 days.

Clashes with the criminal groups that control the area resulted in the death of at least 44 people. According to the Rio de Janeiro state security secretary, José Mariano Beltrame, all these deaths occurred in confrontations. Another 80 people were reported wounded, including several police officers; children and teenagers were unable to attend classes and access to health centers was restricted.

The police operation triggered diverse reactions in society. In an interview to Carta Capital magazine, the coordinator of the Study Center for Security and Citizenship (Cesec), sociologist Silvia Ramos, said that she sees in governor of Rio de Janeiro Cabral Filho’s posture an advance in relation to previous administrations, but reproaches the exclusively police-matter treatment of the issue. To her, “a plan is missing”. Cabral’s policy has “many merits in scoring points with the society. But it is still almost entirely based on the military police”.

Human rights advocacy groups and social movements met with Rio’s Public Security Department. They took reports of police abuse denounced by local residents and declared their complete opposition to the mega operations and the current security policy implemented by the state government, regarded as criminalizing poverty. According to Carta Maior news agency, they also demanded explanations from the governor, who, at the time of the electoral campaign, declared himself against the use of the so-called caveirão, an armored vehicle used by the military police in their incursions into the deprived communities.

To Global Justice’s Sandra Carvalho, behind this reality there is a misguided conception of how to combat organized crime. “The public security policy criminalizes poverty, and these actions create the idea that drug dealing and crime only organize themselves in poor communities”, she contends.

Police action, adds Sandra, cannot only be limited to repressive interventions, but should rather encompass intelligence work that disintegrates organized crime networks, which also have the participation of both the police and the judiciary.

To Raquel Willadino, of the Slum Watch, “we are not against the police entering [the slums], but rather against the way that is happening”. The prospect, according to her, is that police actions will be extended to other Rio de Janeiro hills, one of the greatest causes of concern for these organizations.

President Lula announced the allocation of R$ 2.8 billion of the Growth Acceleration Program for Rio de Janeiro, including social investments in various slum complexes in the city. Sandra agrees with what is one of Rio’s poor communities’ historical demands, but expects other actions to be taken, such as the overhaul of the different police forces. “What we can’t accept is to make the allocation of social spending budgets contingent upon these actions”, she says.

Representation compromised

Congress approved the Budgetary Guidelines Bill (LDO). The LDO is the act of Congress that guides the formulation of the budget for a subsequent year, 2008 in this case. It sets benchmarks, such as the growth rate, investment rules, expenditures, and inflation, according to which the government guides itself by to elaborate the budget. In the text approved by the lawmakers, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is to grow by 5% from 2008 through 2010, the inflation target was set at 4.5%, while the dollar is quoted at R$ 2.23 for next year.

The Congress session that voted the LDO was not conducted by its president, Senator Renan Calheiros, of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), a government coalition party. Renan was absent at the session after strong pressure by opposition parties in the Federal Chamber and in the Senate.

The president of the Federal Senate was accused of having personal expenses paid for by a contractor firm (see International Periscope 15). Since then, he is under pressure to take a leave of absence from the post until the Chamber’s ethics committee concludes its investigations.

The Senate has been going through strong turbulences over the past months. Besides the accusations pending over Renan, late in June another senator of the republic resigned his term of office to avoid an impeachment process and the ensuing loss of political rights for an eight-year period.

Joaquim Roriz, of the same party as Renan, was caught by a Federal Police phone tap, in the course of the Aquarela Operation, negotiating the division of money of unknown origin. Roriz was the governor of the Federal District (the country’s capital) for four terms. For years, he had his life investigated by the Public Attorney’s Office on corruption charges. This time around, he could not manage to get away.

Today the Federal Senate has 81 senators, elected to eight-year terms, one third of the seats renewed in one election and the other two-thirds in a following election. All the 27 units of the federation (26 states and 1 Federal District) have the same representation, with three senators each; unlike the Federal Chamber, which has a representation that is proportional to the population of each state. After the 1988 Federal Constitution, the Senate, which should represent the Federation, took the role of a revising chamber and became a deeply antidemocratic institution.

Philosopher Renato Janine Ribeiro, when portraying the conservatism of the senate created in the 19th century, manages to convey the essence of the Brazilian senate. Says the philosopher: “as the regimes that one day will become democratic advance, there was an attempt to refrain popular representation, directly elected by the people and present in the Lower Chamber, by means of a “conservative Senate” (Napoleon’s terms) made up of noblemen and the wealthy. The elite’s knowledge would hold back the clamor of the masses. It was feared (they said) that demagogy would prompt the poor to elect a Chamber that would expropriate or tax the rich. For that reason, senators have a life term or, at least, longer that that of the deputies. If the majority of the poor elected a left-leaning Chamber, it would need to maintain that majority for two or three consecutive elections, before also controlling the Senate. That would allow time for a conservative reaction, even as the leftist government would be able to deliver very little of its agenda and would become unpopular”.

A complex integration

Another episode involving the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and Brazil. This time Chávez made an ultimatum to the congresses of Brazil and Paraguay: if the two legislatures do not ratify Venezuela’s entrance in the Mercosul in three months’ time, the country will withdraw its application to join the bloc. The statement was made on a nationwide radio and TV broadcast.

According to Chávez, Venezuela will wait until September. “We won’t wait longer because the congresses of Brazil and Paraguay have neither a political nor a moral reason not to approve [our accession]. If they don’t do it, we shall withdraw until new conditions emerge”, he said.

Chávez also qualified as “impertinent” the statement by Brazilian Foreign Relations Minister Celso Amorim that the situation required a “positive gesture” by Chávez in relation to the Brazilian congress, where Venezuela’s accession to the Mercosul is being considered. “Venezuela has nothing to apologize for, it is the Brazilian congress which has to apologize for interfering in domestic affairs”, he argued.

Brazil’s foreign policy has been under frequent attacks by opposition parties and the other conservative sectors, which lost the battle for the creation of the FTAA, don’t want the Mercosul, don’t want the Unasur, and don’t want continental integration. Guided by a foreign policy of subordination to the United States, these forces use every pretext to attack the continental integration.

In this context, Chávez’s declarations just contribute to strengthen the Brazilian political right, which lures the public opinion with nationalistic arguments, and forces the Lula administration to walk on a tightrope, for he has to respond appropriately in the name of the Brazilian State and at the same time avoid giving more ammunition to the enemies of the integration.

PCdoB may leave the CUT

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) approved, on July 8, a resolution whereby it supports a proposal for the creation of a new trace union central, in view of the prospects for a specific overhaul of the Brazilian legislation, which is likely to assign legal status to the trade union central bodies.

The resolution is an indication for the Classist Trade Union Central (CSC, where the Communists act) to leave the Single Central of Workers (CUT) and push for the creation of a new labor central.

The “PCdoB appraised the present political and labor context and concluded that the ongoing initiatives in the sphere of unionism call for raising the bar in the quest for movement unity and cohesion in workers’ struggles, says the text.

According to João Batista Lemos, a PcdoB union leader, “the issue is essentially political”. Batista points to three starting points: the change that the Lula administration underwent; the new labor-political reality; and the process of accumulation of the communist forces inside the labour movement.

This is not the first time that the PCdoB, through the Classist Trade Union Central, threatens to leave the CUT. Now, however, leaving might be part of the party’s broader strategy, which presupposes the creation of a new sector in the Brazilian left that would include parties like the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), a bloc that has been consolidating itself since the election for the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies.

The PCdoB is a historical ally of the Workers’ Party. It was with the PT in every presidential election and is a member of the Lula administration allied base since the first term.

In February this year, the PT and the PCdoB launched their own candidates to the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, PT representative Arlindo Chináglia and Aldo Rebello for the PCdoB (see Periscope 11). Since then, the PCdoB has been discussing the idea of constituting a new party within the leftist camp.

The backdrop to the issue is the 2010 presidential succession. Since there is no natural candidate to succeed Lula, the parties that make up the government’s allied base are engaged in a race for a new name.

UNE elects new board and defines action plan of fight

The National Students’ Union (UNE) held early in July its 50th Congress, with the participation of some 8,000 students. The Congress defined the plan of fights for the next term and elected the entity’s new board. Journalism student Lúcia Stumpf, of the PCdoB, will run the UNE.

Eleven slates ran for the board. Of the total valid votes (2,526), slate 11, which had Lúcia as the candidate, won more than 65%, reaping the support of 1,802 students. The other slates did not nominate a presidential candidate.

Slate 10 got 279 votes and slate 7, 232 votes, while slate 9 got 92 votes and slate 8, 73. The remaining slates together got 14 votes.

The new UNE board members promise to work over the next two years to revive the combative spirit that characterized the entity in the past. For that, the UNE will scale up demonstrations and marches as a means to demand improved education. The journey of struggles approved at the 50th Congress is to be jointly undertaken with the social movements and will serve to commemorate the entity’s 70th anniversary.

On the entity’s agenda a broad array of struggles such as the creation of more places and the opening of more federal universities; more student aid (in the form of housing, food and childcare centers); private school tuitions raised only with the agreement of the students. The UNE also advocates a system of social quotas for the distribution of places in public universities, with 50% of them spared for students coming from public schools, and allotted based on a racial parameter in line with the Brazilian national statistics office criteria.

The resolution on the national conjuncture approved highlights the importance for Brazil of President Lula’s election, which had the UNE’s support, and for Latin America too; it shows breakthroughs, yet it also identifies shortfalls.

According to the document approved “the first months of the new term show a government that still needs to revive the project for the reconstruction of the National State. There is great advance when the government launches the Growth Acceleration Programme, aiming at an investment of over R$ 287 billion in infrastructure and the social areas, and thus contributing to job generation. However, we still need to put behind the neoliberalizing precepts in the macroeconomic policy, such as the monetarist policy of stratospheric interest rates, the surplus fiscal policy, strengthening submission to the dictatorship of financial-speculative capital. That is why the UNE defends the immediate dismissal of Henrique Meirelles, the president of the Central Bank. On one hand, the government scores when it vetoes Amendment 3 –a closet labor reform–, but on the other, the government hints at a new public pension reform and with unacceptable restrictions on the civil service’s right to strike and a cap on public employees’ wage readjustments”.

To the new president, if Meirelles is not fired “we won’t be able to demand more financing for public education. The government will not be able to give more funds”.

Strange applauses

President Lula was booed at the opening ceremony of the Pan-American Games in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The demonstration impeded him from delivering the customary protocol statement by a head of State receiving athletes to a country. The days that followed the incident were filled with speculations over the reasons whereby a sector of the public present would have booed the president, an audience that paid in the range of R$ 20 to R$ 250 per ticket. Another issue that also pervaded debates in the press is whether such episode had been orchestrated.

Although Lula received about 70% of Rio de Janeiro’s votes in the 2006 presidential second-round runoff elections, the state is one in which Lula faces the greatest resistance from the country’s middle class. By observing the high costs of the entrance fees to the games, we may conclude that the public present was not exactly his social base.

The fact is that the boos occurred in Rio de Janeiro, a city run by one of Lula’s main political adversaries, the Party of the Democrats (former PFL). It is symptomatic that in this same venue mayor César Maia was highly applauded.